


it's a dangerous life my dear (we must be of teeth and bone to survive)

by namedawesome, SomeoneAsGoodAsYou (the_wanlorn)



Series: They're Hitmen, Harold [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Chloe gets pushed to the edge and she's doing such a great job!, Eventual Smut, F/M, Hitman AU, Lucifer likes to punish people and knives, Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Violence, mentions of abuse, mentions of marital rape, murderers getting murdered, no one likes it when bad guys get their way and Chloe's gonna make sure they don't, rapists getting murdered, really just a lot of murder going around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2020-09-19 07:02:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 56,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20327050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/namedawesome/pseuds/namedawesome, https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wanlorn/pseuds/SomeoneAsGoodAsYou
Summary: Murder. Corruption. The bright lights of LA.Chloe Decker gave her all to the city. It chewed her up and spat her out, leaving her to become something she thought she'd never be. A hitman.Lucifer Morningstar wasn't in the market to become a mentor. But when Chloe Decker found him and asked for a favor, he found he couldn't resist. Hewasthe best in the business, after all, and there was so much for her to learn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the hitmen AU of our dreams. This hasn't been beta'd so please forgive our mistakes: we are but poor fic farmers, tending our fields of plot.

Chloe Decker hadn't always wanted to be a cop.

It would've made a good story: little girl grew up wanting to be just like her daddy, went into the Academy straight out of high school, wanted to protect and serve with the best of them. Wanted to _help people_.

But, no. The one thing Chloe wanted growing up was to be like _neither_ of her parents. She didn't want to be a cop and she didn't want to be an actress no matter how much her mother pushed and pushed and pushed on that front. She wanted to be her own person.

Then her dad got killed.

"In the line of duty." That was what they called it. He was killed in the line of duty and that didn't make it any better. It wasn't while he was chasing a suspect; it wasn't while he was interviewing a witness. He was in uniform and getting a sandwich. A _sandwich_.

But that was enough to call it "in the line of duty." They caught who did it and that didn't make it any better either. The only thing Chloe could think of that would make it better — as if anything short of killing him in return ever could — was to become a cop herself and help people. To pay her dad's legacy forward.

Being a cop, though, it wasn't what she had pictured. It wasn't at all like what her dad had brought home. It was bribery and corruption and payoffs and she was _drowning_ while she tried to stay above it all. Making detective hadn't made it better. If anything, it had been worse because she was in a position to lose more evidence, ignore more leads. There was more subtle pressure from above to turn a blind eye to some things, pressure she couldn't always ignore.

Refusing to bend under pressure didn't make her any friends and then, well. And then Palmetto happened. Malcolm was dead because she shot him. Malcolm had been dirty and when she caught him dead to rights, he'd raised his gun and she didn't even have time to think about her daughter growing up without a mother. She just reacted and shot him, center mass. He bled out before she finished talking to the dispatcher. She couldn't find it in herself to be sorry.

Maybe the rest of the precinct could feel that, because they certainly didn't cut her any slack. He was "a good cop," everyone said. "One of the good ones." And she had killed him.

It didn't matter that she was protecting herself. It was her word against the station rumor mill, and gossip was never kind. It destroyed her marriage, which was rocky to begin with. When she decided to stop trying to save it, she decided to stop trying to earn acceptance back at work. Both things were over and done with; she just had to let them die.

The divorce was finalized the same day she turned in her badge and gun.

Now she was- She was surviving. She had child support from Dan, she had help — although it came with strings; everything always came with strings — from her mother. She had her mind numbingly boring PI work — working for a guy that thought women weren't good investigators — catching cheating spouses. She was surviving.

She was.

* * *

"Trixie! Breakfast!"

Chloe plunked two plates down on the table — both eggs and toast — and sat, picking up her tablet and scanning the local news. The major story was about the acquittal of Chad Groner, a celebrity venture capitalist accused of multiple counts of sexual assault. Her news feed was full of opinion pieces about how much of a sham the trial was.

Everyone knew Groner was guilty. And maybe, maybe if it had been a different judge, the case may have gone somewhere. But instead, it was Judge Mackenzie — a name she recognized from her father's killer's trial — who was notoriously corrupt. If you wanted your client to get off a charge and they had enough money, Judge Mackenzie was the one to go to.

When her father's killer had gone to trial, she hadn't known anything about the criminal justice system's level of corruption. It wasn't something her dad talked about at home, and so she had assumed that one judge was just like any other: fair. In retrospect, it was lucky that her father's killer had been convicted at all.

Trixie came running into the room and jumped into her chair, drawing Chloe's attention away from the news for the moment.

"Hey monkey. Ready to go back to school?"

"How come I can't stay home with you?" Trixie asked, her mouth full of toast. "Becky's mommy lets her stay home now."

"Don't talk with your mouth full. Becky is going to school, it's just her mommy is her teacher," Chloe explained. "Anyway, wouldn't you miss your friends?"

Trixie appeared to consider that while she swallowed her toast. "Maybe we could all go have school with Becky."

Chloe had to smother a laugh. "It doesn't work like that, monkey. Do you remember what we talked about last night?"

With a huge sigh, Trixie said, "I can't kick people in their no-no touch-touch square, even if they deserve it."

"Right," Chloe said. "What do we do about bullies instead?"

"Get an adult," Trixie grumbled, scowling down at her food.

Chloe braced herself for argument again, but none came. Maybe what she was saying was getting through to her seven-year-old. This was the third time she'd been sent home for trying to beat up kids bigger and meaner than she was. Chloe wanted to beat the little shits soundly until they stopped bullying her baby, but that would undermine the non-violence message she was trying to get Trixie to understand.

"Good," Chloe said as Trixie, breakfast already finished, slipped off her chair. "Go brush your teeth," she called after her.

She knew she should put down her tablet and go get ready for the day too, but a name caught her eye. A quick skim told her it was the lead detective on the case. The one who had testified to there being no evidence that Groner was at one of the victim's houses. It was he-said-she-said at that point, since no evidence had been filed even though the victim had gone to the media to say that police _had_ collected the evidence.

The detective had been the rookie on her dad's case. It had been pretty open-and-shut; witnesses identified the killer, backsplatter was found on his clothing, gunshot residue was on his hands, the gun was in his possession. It was open-and-shut.

It was.

She did a quick search and the detective's name showed up with Judge Mackenzie's more often than not. She could feel the heat of anger crawling up the back of her neck as she dug a little further. She was pretty sure he was dirty, and she knew Mackenzie was dirty. The women involved in the Groner case deserved justice and would never get it, and there was nothing she could do about it.

She tried not to think about how if they were both dirty and both involved in putting her dad's killer away then the odds of him actually being the man who murdered her father were slim. She tried not to think about how he could still be out there, living his life free while her dad was six feet under.

She couldn't do anything about it, but God, did she want to. She couldn't get justice for Groner's victims, either. She was _persona non grata_ at the station, and even if she wasn't, what could she have done? She was just one person. It wasn't like she could have transformed the entire police force all by herself.

"Ready, Mommy!"

She looked up, startled. Trixie was standing by the door with her backpack, impatient to get to school, her earlier sulkiness forgotten. Shit. It was time to leave, and she hadn't even finished her own breakfast.

"Be right there," she said and put down her tablet.

* * *

The idea came in fits and starts.

It started as a niggling doubt in the back of her mind as she took Trixie to school, ran her errands, sat in a park taking clandestine pictures of the latest asshole cheating on his wife. What if... what if Fields wasn't her father's killer? What if he'd been the fall guy? What if the man who murdered her dad was still out there somewhere and she didn't know? What if, what if, what if.

It went around and around in her head until it was all she could think about. She needed to know. She couldn't just live her life forever wondering, forever not knowing if her father had actually gotten justice.

Back at the tiny office she shared with her boss, she started poking around the edges of her father's case. There wasn't much available online. Grimacing, she sent out a request to have a look at the case files, not expecting it to bear fruit. She'd be lucky if anyone even replied, never mind agreed to get her the files.

If she hadn't had so many years as a good detective under her belt, she might start to think that her boss was right about her being a shitty investigator. But the deck was stacked against her when it came to dealing with her former colleagues.

It wouldn't be the first time she saw the file, if she actually got it, but it for once she'd be looking for corruption instead of closure.

At the same time she put in a request to see Fields up at the prison. She doubted he'd tell her anything she didn't already know, but it was worth a try.

And she was right. And when she asked, point blank, if he had killed her father, he only said, "What do you think?"

That wasn't an answer, and yet, it was, because she thought _no_. On the drive home, she kept turning it over and over, trying to decide if she was being crazy, or if Fields really wasn't her father's killer. And if he wasn't... what did she want to do about it? No one at the station would believe her even if she could get someone to listen. There was no way her boss would let her investigate using his resources.

But if he wasn't... if he wasn't, she could track down the real killer... She wasn't an officer of the law anymore. She could-

She jerked her brain away from the thought. _That_ was being crazy. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't kill someone in cold blood. Could she?

If she could, if she really thought she could, then why not do some investigating? Surely her boss couldn't complain if she did this mostly after hours and didn't use company equipment. She could talk to a couple of her old informants, maybe. She didn't need to be working for the police to get results.

Two months (and one murder trial that found the defendant not guilty even though she remembered that case and remembered how clearly everything had pointed to him and she wanted to _do something_ about it but-) later she had confirmation that it wasn't possible for Fields to have murdered her father. But she didn't have a name for the man who did. No one seemed willing to give him up, if they even had a name at all.

And that murder trial...

As a cop, she couldn't condone vigilante justice. As a regular citizen? Some of these people deserved to die. That was all there was to it. Her father's killer deserved to die. If they weren't going to convict Groner, he deserved to die. That murderer deserved to die. The justice system wasn't going to do it. But she-

She still kept a gun in her home. She didn't know a single cop who didn't. It was locked up and she hadn't touched it since before she quit, but it was there. And she could-

No. She had her daughter to think about. She had a life to think about (but did she? Did she really? Was taking pictures of cheaters and perverts and coming home to do not much else really a life?) and she couldn't risk either of those things.

And vigilante justice was wrong. There was that too.

Plus, she knew how hard it as in this day and age to get away with murder — literally — especially if the cops on the case didn't like the suspect. She knew how to get around most of the common forensics, sure, but she couldn't risk it.

She really couldn't. Even though, forgetting everything else, she could use the money. As nice as it sounded, it wasn't possible.

Unless... If she could find someone to learn under...

She shook her head with a laugh and turned back to dinner. Being a hitman wasn't like going into a trade. There weren't apprenticeships. She needed to let it go.

In the end, though, she just couldn't.

* * *

There was a case, a while back. A grisly murder where it had been clear the victims had been tortured beforehand. There was a guy she had her eye on — some rich fuck who waltzed into the station like he owned the place — for a second look. But her partner at the time steered the case in a different direction and she had been too new to be willing to question him. Especially not when they found the real killer.

Something about the guy stuck with her, though. Maybe it was the way his eyes seemed to pierce right through her when he sat at her desk to "have a chat." Maybe it was the serendipity of having found the murderer less than a week after bringing him in for casual questioning. Maybe it was just the way her cop radar pinged whenever he smiled.

Regardless, she put some feelers out, making inquiries. It took some time (two rapists got off even though they had confessed to the crimes they were charged with; _what about their futures?_ people had asked and the judge had been sympathetic) but one of her contacts came back having found that the man she was looking for owned a club, Lux, that was fairly trendy.

Once she felt she had enough confirmation — two of her other old informants and most of her meager savings account later — she had all the information she needed.

This man, this club owner, was Lucifer Morningstar, aka The Devil, aka one of the most notorious hitmen in the business.

The Devil was famous on the streets and in the darkweb channels she had dipped her toes into. He was into punishment — an eye for an eye type of things — and making sure people got their due. There wasn't a file on him at the precinct when she was a cop, but there were rumors that the FBI had a file on him two inches thick, and still not enough to find out his real identity.

And yet, she had. Maybe.

* * *

She waited until Trixie had one of her rare weekends with Dan. She couldn't do this without knowing that Trixie would be with someone for a couple days, long enough for her body to be found if this went wrong. And she was pretty sure it was going to go wrong, but the anger running through her veins, the frustration and rage at the universe, gave her strength and bravery that she didn't know she had before.

She avoided street parking and took a cab to Lux. She had it stop a bit down the street, even though she was dressed for clubbing and thus wearing impracticable shoes, and she took her time walking toward it. It was bright out, even though it was nighttime, and the sidewalks were as busy as she would have expected a Friday night to be. She didn't know how she was going to get into Lux, much less how she was going to find Lucifer Morningstar, but she was going to give it a go.

As she was waiting in the line, nervously smoothing down her dress and fidgeting with her purse, the girls around her gave her the up-and-down look of partiers everywhere and dismissed her. She hoped she was dressed up enough — pretty enough — to get past the bouncers anyway.

A door opened around the side of the building, letting out a dark shape that coalesced into a dark-haired man in a suit briefly before he faded into the shadows at the back of the alley. A light flared and then she could see the red glow of the cherry of a cigarette lighting up the bottom half of his face. He had the jaw and cheekbones of the man she was looking for, so she slid out of line — no one noticed her go — and made her way to the alley.

As her shadow stretched down it, briefly falling over the man, he looked up. Her eyes had adjusted to the dimness as she left the bright of the main boulevard, and she could see his gaze pass over her appraisingly before dismissing her entirely. He pulled out his phone and started to scroll through something as she came to lean against the wall next to him.

"Lucifer Morningstar?" she asked in a low voice.

He turned his head slowly and his gaze slid over her again, eyes narrowed. His thumb was flashing over the screen as he texted something without looking, and she tried to keep her eyes away from the movement. Instead, she studied the dark stubble on his face, the drape of fabric over his shoulders that was fit perfectly, and then the wall across from them.

"Who's asking?" he finally asked, his thumb stilling over a button on the screen. She assumed it was the send button.

"Chloe Decker," she said, steeling her nerves and turning just enough that she could take him in fully again. She ran her eyes up and down his body — that suit must have been expensive — and finally met his hard gaze. His eyes were dark and empty, black like an ocean and so... still. Like there was nothing behind them. "I need to ask you a favor."

He raised an impeccably groomed eyebrow at her, the rest of his expression not changing. "Sure you're in the right place, darling? The police station is on the other side of town."

She set her jaw. He hadn't told her that she was mistaken, he hadn't brushed her off completely, and he hadn't hit send on that text message. "I'm sure. The police can't help me with this."

He smirked at her, a mocking smirk that she wanted to punch off his face.

"I would think you'd be more comfortable on the other side of the badge. Not that I'm opposed to a little cops and robbers roleplay, but I don't think I'm who you're looking for, detective." He cocked his head. "Or is it... ex-detective, now?"

His tone — so dismissive, like he found her _lacking_ already — had her clenching her fists at her sides, fingernails biting into her skin. She wanted to punch him, to yell at him that she wasn't _nothing_, that she may have ruined her life but she was still _someone_.

"I need," she said, enunciating. "To ask you. A favor."

He waved his hand lazily as he took another drag on the cigarette, inviting her to go on. She took a deep breath and turned to face him fully, to meet his dark eyes and stand strong in the face of that empty look. She let out her breath slowly and, putting as much seriousness into her voice as possible, said:

"Teach me to clean."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy!!! have fun guys!!

After Chloe Decker had asked him to ‘teach her how to clean’, he called in a few favors to get some information on her. He knew she had been a detective, a damn good one, because she had suspected him even when her partner (a more experienced, quite lackluster sort of man) had told her to drop him from the suspect list (even if he could, he’d never forget the suspicious stare she’d used on him as her partner had apologized for the inconvenience). He also knew that she wasn’t a detective any longer, though he never really cared enough to find out the details. 

The information he got back was… unsatisfying, but that was because, as far as he could tell, she had been on the straight and narrow for her entire life. Chloe Decker was the most boring individual he’d ever encountered (he ignored the thoughts that told him that that was a good thing when it came to a job like his, who would suspect her? _absolutely no one_! But he didn’t want to be a mentor, he really didn’t!). He shook thoughts of her away and focused on his next job. He was supposed to be studying the layout of the home he was going to be… visiting tonight. 

When Mazikeen had come to him about this target (he’d been so eager for this one, a truly despicable human being…), he’d jumped on it. The people that contacted him truly wanted their… _friends_ to suffer greatly. The called him the Devil for a reason, of course. He did like justice, but not the boring kind. He liked the violent sort, the… the messy sort. 

After going through all the information he had on his… new friend, he started packing a bag. Extra clothes, new pair of shoes, garbage bags, zip ties, knives, a bone saw, and a garrote if he was feeling particularly blood thirsty. Just the usual sort of bag for a night out, really. 

He picked the most nondescript car he had in the garage and pulled out into the night. He listened to music as he drove, planning out exactly how he was going to treat his target. He knew that the punishment would definitely have to fit the crime, as it always did, but it was always fun to wonder how he would do it beforehand. Most… sessions he would choose one of his tools and stick with it, others he wouldn’t choose a tool, preferring to use his hands, gloved, obviously. Very rarely would he use more than one, but perhaps… this man was wicked enough to warrant such behavior. 

He parked and then he got out and started walking. He’d parked close, but not close enough to be connected to what would soon be a crime scene. He wondered when he would get a job where they would ask him to dispose of the body; those always paid more. He finally got to his destination, and really, his preferred jobs involved more… hunting, but he had been requested for this one, so he’d gladly take the payday. 

This one ended like all the others had, his target begging for his life (in some cases death, but that was after the hunt, after he’d done such a good job on them that they just didn’t want to go on). He had to kill him, of course, it was part of the job, and that bit was always satisfying, but he was… it felt a little… it felt less so. Perhaps it was because he was preoccupied, he wondered as he changed his clothes. He stuffed those and his shoes into a garbage bag along with the gloves he had been using and put them in the bag along with his knife which he’d been sure to clean. He’d been thinking about Chloe Decker as he’d done his work and not even the screams of his target had been able to distract him. 

He didn’t want to consider her proposal, so he made himself forget it and went back to his club. The night was still relatively young when he got there, and he settled at the piano after a trip upstairs to drop off his bag and wash his hands (not because he’d gotten blood on them, but just in case). He played idly for a moment, just warming up, and then he began his set. He let his eyes roam the faces of the people around him as he played, and though it had only been few days since he’d first spoke to her, Chloe Decker was standing directly across from him. He made himself look away from her, made himself focus more on his music. He would _not_ entertain the thought of training anyone. Even if she had figured out on her own what more than half a dozen FBI suits couldn’t even begin to manage, but that was neither here nor there, because he wasn’t going to train anyone to do anything.

As soon as he was done playing, she was sitting next to him on the bench. He ignored her as best as he could, talking to someone else who had come up to him, but she was patient and it annoyed him.

“Mr. Morningstar,” she started, once the person he’d been talking to had walked away. 

“I’ve told you ‘no’, Ms. Decker,” he said, cutting her off. 

“Mr. Morningstar, please,” was all she said. It sounded genuine and determined, like she had a very good reason for asking this of him, but he made himself not care about why she might want this so badly that she would (sort of) beg. 

“No,” was his reply, and then he stood and walked to the bar. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, relaxing slightly as soon as she left. He had been planning on having a bit of company, but it seemed that his night was going to be filled with reading the files he’d received on Chloe Decker instead. 

After a few more hours of mingling and fulfilling his role as a club owner, he made his way upstairs. His files were right where he left them, and he picked up one after he poured himself a drink. She was working for a private investigator now, after quitting being an actual detective. She’d killed another detective, her file said and as he read more, he saw her statement of the incident. He didn’t want to care, so he put that paper down and picked up another. Her family history. The only thing interesting on the page was the fact that her mother was _the_ Penelope Decker. Her father had died when she was young, before she had gone into the police force, and he wondered what Officer Decker had done to deserve it. 

Setting the entire file aside, he decided that it was late enough for him to take care of the clothes he’d been wearing earlier in the evening. They were different from his usual attire which was a necessary precaution in his line of work. He’d had an incinerator installed in Lux, so he took the garbage bag of clothes and the files on his mark along with the garbage bag from the kitchen to the elevator. It was late enough that he didn’t run into anyone, and once he was back in his penthouse, he decided to go to bed. He told himself that he wouldn’t think about Chloe Decker again.

And he didn’t think about her for a week and a half. He hadn’t been idle in that time either, a few jobs and taking care of Lux. He’d had a wonderful time, not thinking about her. Not even when he’d glace over to where he’d put her file once every few days and think about how she might do during a job. 

He had just pulled into the parking garage, handing the valet the keys, when he heard someone call out his name. He turned, and there was Chloe Decker. He turned away and started walking into the club, but she followed him. “Mr. Morningstar,” she started, “please hear me out!”

“Ms. Decker, I’ve already told you-” he was cut off. 

She put a hand on his arm. It was warm and he froze, not used to the contact. “Please…” was all she asked of him.

He was silent for a long moment, waiting for her to remove her hand but she never did. “I’ll hear you out,” he told her, “but only that, Ms. Decker.”

He started walking, making her finally drop her hand, and had her follow him to the elevator. Usually, he would head straight for the bar and ask how they were doing business wise, if they needed anything, but he just wanted to get this over with. He punched in the code (he hadn’t wanted to put a code on his elevator, but sometimes he wasn’t exactly careful with his files and weapons) and ushered her inside. He looked her over as they stood in silence. She was beautiful by anyone’s standards; her eyes were striking… that was the first thing he had noticed about her when she had come to him that night in the alley. And the fact that her gaze was very intense when she would turn it on him like she was doing now. 

He offered her a drink when they reached his penthouse, but she declined. As he poured himself one, he watched her looking around the room. He could see how much she wanted to look around, to snoop, which was good for the job, especially the pursuit portion of it, and he made himself stop thinking about her being good at a job like his. 

He leaned back against the bar and offered her a seat with a wave of his hand. “Why do you want to ‘clean’, as you so eloquently put it the other night,” he asked, not wanting to be interested (he wasn’t, not really, he would never entertain the thought). 

“I was forced out of my job as a detective,” she told him. He watched her wring her hands together as she gathered her thoughts. “I killed a dirty cop, and I was… they forced me out, and now I’m a private investigator watching people cheat on their spouses and taking pictures.”

“So, you’re bored and want some excitement?” Lucifer scoffed. 

She glowered at him. “What I _want_ is for them to pay for what they’ve done, for the corruption to stop, and I want to find out who really killed my father. I want them to see what they’ve done, if they even care about what they’ve done!” she was glaring at him, her eyes darker and he believed her, thought she could do it even, but he _would not_ help her. He raised a brow at her imploring her to continue with an air of apathy he didn’t really feel. He understood revenge and righteous fury and he knew how it felt to want it as badly as she did. “My father was a good man, a good cop, and he was killed for no reason. The man they put in prison for it… I think they were wrong, and I think the corruption in the LAPD is connected and this is the only way I can think to fix it…”

“That’s all well and good, Ms. Decker, but I really don’t see why you would come to me, how you even found me,” he drained his glass and poured himself another. 

“They all say the Devil is the best at what he does.”

“Including making sure no one knows who I am,” he tried not to growl, but he had never been a patient man. Except when it came to the hunt.

She sighed. “When I was first staring as a detective there was a case-”

“You never believed a word I said, though it was the truth,” he smirked. “I never lied to you.”

Chloe nodded. “A version of it,” she corrected. “I had a hunch and when… when I decided that they needed to pay, I did a little digging.”

“There are people with many more resources than you that haven’t found a single scrap of my existence.”

“I’m a good-” she cut herself off. “I was a good detective.”

Lucifer watched her for a very long moment, not knowing what exactly he was going to say to that. She had found out who he was, what he did for a living, and she was asking him to teach her how to do it as well. True to his moniker, he let himself be tempted, if only for a moment, to imagine what teaching her would be like. She knew how to handle a gun, knew how to stay out of sight, and he suspected that she would be very good at tailing a target, at the pursuit of ‘evil’. He downed the second drink he’d poured and shook his head. “As noble and understandable as your reasons are, my dear, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he sighed. 

She looked down at her lap, and after a moment she nodded. She got up and walked to the elevator and he watched her. She looked back at him before she entered and those eyes of hers had become so much more intense. “Thank you for listening,” she told him. 

He nodded once, and then, moved forward as she entered the elevator. “Ms. Decker,” he started. Her eyes met his and he offered her a sickly-sweet smile, “I know where to find you if you go to the authorities with the information you have on me.”

He watched the doors close, knowing he would probably never see her again, and ignoring the pull in his gut that told him to go after her and take his refusal back. He poured himself another drink and threw it back. He wouldn’t consider it again. 

He went to change, putting on a different suit, a darker one with a deep blue waistcoat to go with it. He pushed all thoughts of Chloe Decker and her quest for revenge (quite justified if anyone were asking him, but they weren’t and he _did not_ care about her or her reasons) aside and went to go entertain the public. And perhaps be entertained in return. 

He played his piano and reveled in the attention he was given. He was glad for the chance to relax, and at the end of the night he did bring someone upstairs with him. He reveled in them too. 

The next two weeks were busy, what with the job Mazikeen had brought him and he’d been able to follow his target this time, watching and cataloging the absolutely despicable man’s schedule and behavior. Collecting sins like butterflies pinned to corkboard, putting them on display to show to his prey when the moment was right. He was a hunter by nature and once he captured his prey, only a husk was left, sometimes less, but Lucifer didn’t keep trophies, didn’t need to, not when he could remember every moment. 

He had just come back from that job, wandering through the writhing masses to drop his bag off in his penthouse. He got into the elevator and when he got upstairs, he was distracted again, by thoughts of Chloe Decker. The first he’s had of her in weeks. He never did finish that file…

He poured himself a generous drink and gathered the file that he had all but packed away. Once he settled on one of his leather chairs, he opened it, ignoring the information about her personal life and shifting through it until he found what he was looking for. Her work files. He read through her statement about what the file had dubbed ‘Palmetto’. She was adamant in her statement that the cop was dirty, but the report said something else. Something he was sure wasn’t true. If she could figure out who he was then she could find a dirty cop. 

He saw the official transcript of her interrogation and, also provided, was the unofficial one. The one where the cops had treated her like a hostile suspect, and while he didn’t have any audio, he’d been in an interrogation room often enough to know what cops sounded like when they asked certain questions. They had been trying to get her to slip up, but she had never wavered or contradicted herself. 

He saw her closure rate as a detective. It was good, and he would bet that if she didn’t have Palmetto on her record it would be better. He looked deeper into the file, reading about her current job. Mostly taking pictures of cheating spouses and the like, nothing substantial and he perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised that she had found his identity. She was used to much more challenging work. He tried to make himself push away the thought of her working with him, learning everything he could teach her. It would be more like a repurposing of her skills than learning much of anything new. Unless she would like to learn how to _punish_ but he wasn’t sure that she was the type to treat people like he did. He wouldn’t know for sure until she tried.

Not that she would get the chance. He wouldn’t teach her. 

He put the file aside and went to get ready for the rest of the night in Lux proper. He didn’t rush, but he did want to get away from the thoughts he had been having. He doubted he’d see her again, not now that he’d listened and told her no.

As soon as he exited the elevator, he stopped in his tracks. There at the bar was Chloe fucking Decker, and her eyes were trained on him like she’d been waiting for him to come downstairs. Like she’d known that he would be thinking about her. She didn’t come to him this time, just waited at the bar, nursing her drink and staring at him (into his soul, it felt like, though he knew she wasn’t). He shook himself and went to the bar to get a drink of his own. He was close to her, but not close enough for them to speak, so he made his way back to the piano. He stopped and talked to almost everyone he passed, playing host where he could. He made it to his piano eventually and played his set to everyone’s delight. He hadn’t been in house much over the last few weeks, and he was glad to see that he was missed. 

He lingered around his piano, trying to avoid going to get a second drink, but he was thirsty, and he could feel her eyes on him, tempting him (those two things were mutually exclusive, of course, but both were equal in tempting him towards the bar). He couldn’t help that fact that he drifted towards her, well, more towards the bar than her. He was trying to ignore the fact that he was right next to her as Patrick poured his drink, but it was difficult because she was staring at him. He didn’t know if she would ever stop and it was driving him a little up the wall. 

Once his drink was in his hand, he turned to her and stared right back. He hoped his gaze felt like it was burning along her skin like hers had done to him all night. Hours of burning. He was no stranger to being watched, but those eyes of hers…

“Ms. Decker,” he greeted. 

“Mr. Morningstar,” she replied, and he tried not to be charmed by her tone or her smirk and clearly, she had been drinking because she was much more relaxed than he’d ever seen her. “You know what I’m going to ask you.”

He nodded once. “You know what I’m going to say,” he replied, but he didn’t look away from her. 

She sighed heavily and she nodded. “Had to try one more time,” she shrugged. She got up and started walking away, but then she turned back, “I won’t bother you again.”

Lucifer panicked for a moment. She couldn’t mean to… when he’d seen her tonight the plan had been to… to refuse but… The wanting he felt pulled sharply at him and he found himself hurrying after her. Once they were out on the street, he called out to her. She turned, brow furrowed and eyes filled with apprehension. “Alright,” he managed after a moment of silence.

“’Alright’?” she asked, frowning.

He sighed heavily, like it pained him (it did). “I’ll teach you to clean.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a great big thanks to [zeearts](https://zeearts.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr!!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh, chapter 3! Things are starting to get rolling now...

Mr. Morningstar told Chloe he would contact her and sent her on her way without telling her how or when. She was too rattled by her success to get details, and besides, she knew where he lived.

There were butterflies in her stomach as she drove home, and she felt slightly nauseated. She had done it. She convinced the Devil to take her on as a pupil. To teach her how to be a hitman. To- She had- She-

Oh god, what had she done?

Bile rose in her throat as she swerved across a lane of traffic and to the curb. She leaned out of the driver's side window and stayed like that for a moment, swallowing convulsively. She didn't vomit, but her stomach roiled uncomfortably as she sat back up. Traffic was backing up, people slowing to go past her, and she nodded guiltily to the guy honking his horn as he drove past. She wiped a hand across her mouth and shut the door before pulling back into the flow.

It didn't matter that it made her feel sick, she had already made the decision. She had put   
_effort_ into it, and if she backed out now...

If she backed out now there was a hitman out there who knew who she was and who would have a vested interest in keeping her silent. She had trapped herself in a corner, no way out but through. But oh, the regret burned even as a soft feeling of triumph bubbled up from beneath it. No matter what happened, she would have that — the knowledge that she had bested the Devil in a battle of... of stubbornness.

There was a small kernel of doubt forming as she pulled into her driveway and sat still in the car for a moment. She hadn't pressed for how long she'd have to wait. He could conceivably have just blown her off and be congratulating himself right now on successfully getting her off his back. She supposed if she didn't hear from him soon, she'd... well. She could be stubborn, sure, but maybe that would be a sign from the universe that this wasn't the right course of action. As if this could ever be considered "right" in any way.

And so, Chloe waited.

* * *

Waiting was hard. She preached patience to Trixie, told her that good things came to those who wait, all the cliches you tell small children so they'll stop bothering you for five minutes. She'd never claim to be patient, but this was almost beyond her.

The butterflies never went away. Every time her cell rang, there was a moment of heart pounding adrenaline coursing through her before she saw it wasn't him. Every time a shadow passed the window, she held her breath, thinking it might be him. She should have pressed for more details.

She thought about going to loiter around Lux, maybe do a few drive-bys just to see if she could catch a glimpse of him, but something about that seemed too risky. Too much like she was stalking an ex-lover.

In any case, surely he would notice her and either decide to get rid of her the old fashioned way or decide that she was too much trouble and just never contact her. Waiting was all she could do.

Her life continued, even as a piece of her mind was always dwelling on her decision and his acquiescence. Trixie was being bullied but the school administration refused to do anything about it. Her boss continued to hand her small-time cases that she could have done in her sleep. Dan, her ex, canceled on his weekend with Trixie again.

Time flowed forward.

When she first sat down at her desk on Wednesday morning, she didn't notice the cheap cell phone sitting there. Her mind brushed it off as unimportant, something her boss had left for her that could wait until after she caught up on the latest cheating case he'd given her.

When it did catch her attention, it was only because she moved a couple papers over and accidentally knocked it to the floor. Her boss wasn't in, and there was nothing on her desk or in her email indicating why he had left her a phone. It could be...

It looked like a cheap smartphone, probably pay-as-you-go. She held down the power button. The screen flashed on, confirming her assessment. The home screen only had one icon on it, the one for the phone app. She tapped it, and it opened to the contacts. There was one contact, no name.

Did this mean she was supposed to call him? Was this his way of contacting her and she should wait for his call? Maybe she should send a text... except, no, those were too traceable. She had no idea where this number actually went, was only assuming that it connected to Mr. Morningstar.

Best case scenario, it did. Worst case scenario, it connected to the police in the hopes she would say something incriminating in a text message.

She jumped in surprise and nearly dropped the phone when it started to buzz nearly silently in her hand. She clutched it and answered.

"Detective," a voice purred on the other end of the line.

It was him.

Still, her first instinct was to deny it. "I'm not-"

He shushed her and said, "No? You did track me down, after all. It makes a good name, darling."

She bit back the instinct to snap at him and tell him not to call her "darling." Instead, she nodded.

"Good," he said before she could respond, and her blood ran cold.

"Are you watching me?" she asked, ducking out of sight of the window — out of the line of fire should he be on a rooftop nearby. It was an automatic response, one honed from years on the force with no one to watch her back but herself.

"I have eyes everywhere," he said and chuckled, like it was a joke and she was a small child who had walked right into it.

She cast a glance up to the corners of the ceiling, as though he would be so foolish as to put in a visible cam to spy on her with. No, it could be anywhere and she'd need to thoroughly go through the room for bugs if she wanted to feel comfortable working at her desk again. She shivered, not liking the thought that he could have been watching her all this time. Not liking that he probably _had_ been watching her.

"Did you bug my office?" she asked, her voice flat, expecting him to brush off the question.

"Did you expect I wouldn't?" He still sounded amused at her expense.

But, it was a fair question. If she had thought about it harder, she would have expected it. It was on her that she hadn't even considered the possibility that he had the office bugged.

It would be on her if she didn't consider the possibility that he had her home and car bugged, too. Shit. She'd need to borrow equipment from the closet and sweep both places. There was no way she could leave them, not with Trixie in the house getting into things.

"Touché," she said.

Was it also a warning that he could get into her office at any time? She liked to think that her boss kept the place slightly more secure than the average office, given the amount of confidential files and expensive equipment they had. But that would hardly matter to someone like Lucifer Morningstar. She would need to go over the security tapes for the past week and see-

"I have a job coming up in a month." His voice jolted her out of her thoughts. The amusement was gone from his tone; he was suddenly all business. "Meet me at the park by your house tomorrow at dusk. Seven should do it."

And then he hung up.

She would need to get a babysitter for Trixie, of course. There was no way she could bring her to a meeting with a hitman. She'd need to get home earlier than she'd planned, too, if she wanted to see Trixie before it was bedtime. Maybe she could move the surveillance she was supposed to be doing tomorrow to the day after.

She needed to finish going through her emails and making sure there wasn't anything that needed immediate attention, but she couldn't drag her mind away from the thought of actually going to meet a hitman in a park at night. It could be suicide. It could be the stupidest thing she'd ever done. There was no part of her that felt it was a good idea, but also no part of her that felt she had a choice. She had put too much effort and time in to convincing him to take her own. She couldn't back out now.

* * *

What was the appropriate outfit to wear to go meet the hitman that was going to show you the ropes? Chloe had no idea. She stood in front of her closet, rifling through the clothes on hangers. Nothing caught her eye as being appropriate.

Unremarkable. That was what she should go for. Something unremarkable and plain, that would let her blend into a crowd. Something people's eyes would pass right over, not giving her a second glance.

She ended up choosing a nice shirt that wasn't something she would mind losing, if something happened to it, and a worn pair of jeans. Minimal makeup, hair in a ponytail, shoes that would let her run.

"Are you going on a date, Mommy?"

She turned to see Trixie hovering in the doorway, grinning her gap-toothed smile. There was a smudge of chocolate cake on her cheek and marker on her fingers. Her hair was escaping her pigtail braids in wisps and she had never been cuter. For a moment, Chloe considered calling the babysitter to cancel and staying. What she was considering — no, planning; she was past the considering phase by now — to do could get her thrown in prison or killed, and then who would Trixie have? _Dan_?

If she were a better mother, she would stay. If she were a better person, she would stay. If she had a harder heart or a weaker stomach or knew less about the justice system of LA, she would stay.

She was none of those things, had none of those things.

"No, not a date, monkey," she said in answer as she touched up her makeup one last time. She wouldn't be dropping any jaws, but she wouldn't be quite as noticeable as a woman with no makeup on, either. "I'm just meeting a friend."

"Oh, okay. Will you be back before bedtime?"

"Probably not," she said and turned, swooping down to hug Trixie and making her giggle. "But I'll come tuck you in when I get back, okay?"

"Okay!" Then the doorbell rang and Trixie was running off with an, "I'll get it!" shouted back.

Chloe almost grabbed her and warned her against answering the door, but it was just the babysitter, and it wasn't like she was far behind, anyway, coming around the corner just as Trixie threw open the door. For a heart-stopping moment, Chloe didn't see anyone, and was about to call Trixie back, her mind immediately going to the worst place. It had been a trap, the Devil was come to give her her due, it-

Then Amelia came into view, holding up the mail that Chloe, in all her nervousness about the night meeting, had forgotten to grab.

"Hey Trix, Ms. Decker!" Amelia came in and handed her the mail. Then Trixie was dragging her away to look at the coloring she was doing at the kitchen table before she could say anything else.

Bill, bill, overdue bill... Chloe grimaced and put the mail aside before grabbing her purse and checking that the burner phone was in it. She dithered for a moment over whether she should take her real cell or not. She didn't necessarily want someone knowing she was at the park and linking her to Lucifer Morningstar. But then, if someone got that far into investigating him, she had more pressing troubles than being put in the same park as him.

Plus, she didn't like the thought of leaving Trixie with a teenager and no way for them to contact her. If she kept doing this, she was going to have to see if Trixie's usual after school sitter could take on more hours. She would just be more comfortable with being out of contact if there was an adult in the house.

"I'm heading out," Chloe told Amelia and Trixie, bending to give the latter a quick kiss on the head. "Be good for Amelia, okay?"

"Okay, bye Mommy," Trixie said, obviously distracted by the drawing she was working on. Chloe couldn't help but smile at that.

"I'm not sure when I'll be back," she told Amelia again, "but there's a twenty on the counter for pizza and I'll pay you extra if it's past midnight."

"Sure thing," Amelia said with a smile and a wink. "I got it."

Great, her teenage babysitter thought she was going out for a hookup. Chloe really hoped that it didn't get back to Dan. He would take issue with it for sure, and she just didn't want to get into it with him again.

It was a warm night out, and the park was close enough to walk to, so she left her car behind. It took less than fifteen minutes for her to get there, and another ten of wandering around aimlessly, looking for Mr. Morningstar, before she gave up and sat at a bench in a dark corner. She really should have gotten more information out of him before just agreeing to meet here.

"Detective," a voice said behind her and she jumped and stood, trying to make it look less like a startle response and more like something she'd meant to do all along.

Lucifer Morningstar was dressed in jeans and a shirt that looked like they cost more than her monthly income. He blended, though, giving off an air of the LA wealthy tinged with a don't-mess-with-me edge. If she passed him on the street — or in the park — she wouldn't have given him a second glance.

He was looking her over as she stood there, before giving an approving nod and going around the bench to sit on the opposite end. She sank slowly back into her seat, feeling like she'd just passed a test she didn't know she was taking. She wasn't sure whether to feel pleased about that or irritated. She didn't want to be playing a game of never knowing if she was doing the right thing or not. She hated those games.

"Well look at you, Detective," he said, sending her a sidelong glance with a smirk. "Dressing for the role already."

"You can call me Chloe, you know," she found herself saying instead of asking what they were doing in a park near dusk. She forced down the part of her that wanted to hear her name in his accent. He was attractive, yes, but he was also a hitman and a one night stand wasn't worth the complications it would bring. "I'm still not a detective anymore."

"Just trying to get you used to your codename, darling," he said. He had leaned back against the bench and had one arm resting across the top, an air of casual disdain about him that didn't reach his sharp eyes. He was watching her, studying her, and she wanted to squirm under his careful assessment. "After all, you can't deny you're a detective every time someone uses it."

Two could play that game. She refused to let him know he was making her uncomfortable, instead leaning back just as he had, letting the tips of his fingertips brush across her shoulder where they just reached. She wasn't sure if it was surprise she saw in his eyes, but at least it was something other than that cold calculation. His fingers twitched before laying still, the barest sensation of pressure against her shoulder.

"So, Mr. Morningstar-" she started, intending to ask why they were in the park, what they were going to be doing and — she hadn't thought of it before she came but now that she was there the thought was settling in her belly with a cold dread — if this was a hit.

But he interrupted, looking faintly amused. "Call me Lucifer, please. It's only fair."

He had turned the charm back on like a switch had been flipped, letting it ooze from every pore. It was disconcerting, to say the least, and she wondered if it worked on other people who didn't know what he was. She wondered if it was how he lured people to their untimely deaths, or if he was doing it to try to put her off. She supposed she would find out.

So she rolled her eyes at him and said, "Okay, _Lucifer_. What are we doing here?"

She really hoped it wasn't for a hit. She wasn't prepared for that, at all. While she knew that she was going to have to face up to the reality of what they were doing — what _she_ was doing — at some point, she was hoping it was something she could work her way up to. Being thrown in the deep end was never fun.

He handed her a folder — where had that even come from? — and she took it with only mild trepidation. Flipping it open revealed a single sheet of paper with a name, headshot, and address on it. No other details. She took a moment to study the face in the picture: a young man, late-twenties, carefully combed sandy hair and a hardness to his eyes that made her grimace in distaste. She didn't know what he'd done yet, but he had the look of one of those white guys who thought nothing could touch them.

And sometimes, in her experience, nothing could. Her resolve firmed as she remembered the Groner trial. This, this type of guy, was why she was doing this. If Lucifer told her Groner was going to be the hit, she could do it right then.

But this guy wasn't Groner. "What's he done?" she asked, wondering what type of hit Lucifer took. For all she knew of the Devil, it wasn't much. There were rumors, of course, but-

Lucifer shrugged idly, and she asked, "You didn't ask?"

He laughed. "In this business, the why doesn't matter. We're not the judge or the jury, just the executioner."

"Okay," she said slowly, uncomfortable with the implication that she'd be expected to kill innocent people. "So are we..."

He laughed again, a dark chuckle that had the little hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. "Not yet. First we need to find out a little more about this _Brent_."

When he fell silent, she prodded with, "Like his schedule?"

"His schedule, his family's schedule, and what he's guilty of." The smile that accompanied the last of those was wicked and she had to hold back a shiver.

"I thought you said the why didn't matter?"

"I don't care why someone is a target. But everyone has their guilty little secrets, and _everyone_ deserves punishment for them."

She sat with that for a moment. It- She didn't like the way it made sense to her. As a cop, she'd learned that everyone was guilty of something. And while maybe it was nothing that deserved death, if they were already going to die, why not make sure the punishment fit their crimes? It was something she could get behind.

"Alright," she said, nodding a little, unconscious of the small smile that was gracing her face. "I'm guessing by the size of this folder we're going on a stakeout?"

"Very good, Detective," he said. "We'll make a killer of you yet."

* * *

Lucifer's car was not what she would have expected for a hitman.

"Aren't you supposed to blend in?" she asked with a raised eyebrow at the sight of the Corvette. There was no way they were going to do any blending in _that_.

He cast her an amused glance. "Where we're going, this will blend," he said and opened the door for her.

She slid in, a bit thrown by the gesture. It struck her as odd, the gentlemanly behavior. He didn't seem to be the type of person who held doors open for women he was working with. Determined not to let him see that, though, she opened the folder again.

"This is really all we get," she said as he got in, not really a question.

She had been on cases that started with less information, but not many. But this wasn't a case. They weren't looking for evidence of a crime. Just whatever Lucifer meant by a "guilty secret" and enough of a schedule to know when they could kill him.

"It's all we need," he said and pulled away from the curb with a squeal of tires.

She closed the folder and gripped it hard as he sped down the road, her nerves telling her to tell him to slow down. It wasn't that she objected to going fast in general, it just didn't seem like a good idea to be pulled over for speeding while they were on their way to a stakeout.

But, he was the professional. He knew what he was doing. If he wanted to get pulled over that was up to him. She just really, really hoped they didn't.

By the time he slowed the car to a stop, they were on the outskirts of the rich area of LA, right before people started living in gated communities but after they had more money than sense. He was right; the car did blend in.

They parked down the road and sat in silence for an agonizing five minutes. Chloe didn't know what to say to break the tension that had settled over them. Stakeouts were never her favorite thing to begin with. They were long, boring, and had just as much a chance of yielding nothing interesting as they did of getting the information she needed to close a case.

This was different, true. They were- She wasn't actually sure what they were doing.

"What are we looking for?" she asked quietly, mindful of the open air.

Lucifer was just as quiet. "The wife stays home with the children while he's at work. Since the house is never empty, the best time to plant bugs is while everyone's asleep."

"Are you crazy?" she hissed. "There's no way you can do that without getting caught!"

He gave her a look that was probably meant to remind her that he was the professional here and she was the apprentice, but she ignored it.

"What if they have a dog? Or a security system? Or-"

"Why Detective, is this concern for me or are you worried I'll bring you down with me if I get caught?"

She wanted to knock the smug smile off his face. She hadn't considered that if they were caught he might flip on her. That... That was probably something she should have worried about a long time ago and come to terms with. There was still time to back out; she hadn't actually done anything. She could still-

Screaming started inside the house, a raised male voice yelling indistinctly and a child crying. When she glanced to Lucifer, his face had gone tight and his teeth were bared in something that might generously be called an eager smile. A sharp noise echoed in the air before a door slammed and their target was briefly illuminated in the glow of the porch light. Then he was getting in his car and driving off.

"Shouldn't we..." Chloe said, drifting off as Lucifer put the car in gear and started tailing Brent. She knew what that crack had meant, and had a good idea of where Brent would be going. The same place a man always went after storming out.

"No," Lucifer said. His fingers were gripping the wheel tight enough that his knuckles were white. "We shouldn't."

"But-" she started, only to bite off the rest of the words that wanted to come spilling out when he turned his head to look at her. Okay, then.

Brent went exactly where she thought he would: the nearest bar. It wasn't much of a dive, not in that sort of neighborhood, but it wasn't exactly catering to the tourist population. He went inside and Chloe expected that they were going to follow him, but Lucifer made no move to get out of the car.

Instead, he turned and dug around in the back before pulling out a tiny piece of plastic-encased circuitry, which he handed to her.

"Go put this behind his back wheel," he told her.

Right, tracking him by GPS would be much easier than tailing him constantly. They both had other jobs that they needed to be doing. She'd done this before as a cop and knew the drill. Stumble over like she was slightly drunk, drop her purse by the car, and attach the tracker when she crouched to pick it up. She was back in the corvette within five minutes.

Lucifer was watching her speculatively as she quietly closed the door. No more takebacks. If Lucifer got caught and flipped on her, she was going away for aiding and abetting at the very least. His gaze was heavy on her as she stared straight out the windshield at the door of the bar.

"What?" she finally snapped, turning to him when he didn't stop staring at her.

He shook his head at her. "I always did think that a dirty cop would make an excellent student."

"I'm _not_-" she said, carefully controlling her voice so she didn't end up shouting at him in the middle of the parking lot "-a dirty cop. I was never a dirty cop. If you think-"

"Yes, yes," he said, a little peevishly. "Of course you aren't literally dirty. I did do my research on you. You're honest to a fault." His eyes had narrowed into suspicious slits as he talked. "It does make a man wonder why you've chosen this line of work."

She clenched her jaw, not ready to have that conversation. So she searched for a flippant answer. "Doesn't everyone want to walk on the wild side once in a while?"

"Not you," he said. His eyes were dark and glittering in the glow of the street lamps, his face shadowed. It made him look dangerous, more dangerous than he had in all of her interactions so far.

"No," she murmured. "Not me."

"So why, Detective? What has you putting aside those morals to work with someone like me?"

She sighed and sunk deeper into her seat. "Men like Brent. You know he was yelling at either his wife or child in there, and that he hit them, right?"

Lucifer nodded carefully, guarded, and she shrugged.

"He'd never serve time for it. Not anything substantial anyway. Were you following the Groner case?"

"In passing," he said.

"I can't just. Sit by while that happens. At least while I was a detective I could pretend I was helping." She didn't mean to let the bitter laugh escape, but it did. When she cast a quick glance back to Lucifer, he was looking... oddly sympathetic.

"Vigilantism, then," he said, nodding a little to himself.

"What sort of... jobs do you take on?" she found herself asking, desperate to change the subject from her helplessness to something, anything else.

He laughed. "Oh, I hardly think that's first date conversation."

She echoed his laugh, a bit ruefully. "Fine, have your secrets. I'll get them out of you eventually."

"I don't doubt it," he murmured and she shot a sharp glance to him that he didn't return. "I'm sure Brent will be in there for quite some time. Let's return to the house."

The short drive back to the house was silent. Chloe wasn't sure if she wanted to press more at what kind of jobs he usually took. It was probably smarter to leave it alone. She was going to find out, anyway, if she kept working with him. A part of her hoped that the reason why he wanted to know why she chose to seek him out was so that he could tailor jobs specifically to her needs and morals. That he wouldn't take a hit that she would object to and then expect her to do it.

She would never try to control the type of hit he took for himself. Even if she could, that seemed... too personal a thing to try to change. She just... didn't want to be forced to kill someone who didn't deserve it.

The house was dark when they get back, despite it being barely nine at night. Lucifer instructed her to stay in the car and, before she could object, he had taken a handful of wires out of the back and disappeared around the house.

She saw a shadow of movement in the front room and held her breath until she realized it was just him. Her heart was racing and her hands were fisted from anxiety as she watched for more signs of him. There was nothing, though. No signs of anyone waking up either, which was also good.

As ten minutes came and went and he was still inside, she started to get more nervous. How long could it possible take to place a few bugs? She'd never been on a case that required it, but common sense said that the longer you spent in a place, the more likely you were to get caught.

Just as she was about to get out and sneak around back, Lucifer appeared on the other side of the car, setting her heart into overdrive. She bit down on the frightened squeak that wanted to escape and glared at him, which he seemed to take in stride.

"There," he said, and handed her a small tablet. "Bugs are done. The feed is being sent to my tablet and from there to this one. Keep an eye on it."

She studied it, noting that the bugs he had planted had both audio and visual. It looked like he'd managed one in each room, including-

"How did you get one in the master bedroom?" she asked.

He just smiled innocently and put the car in gear to drive off.

"No, seriously," she said, laying a hand on his arm before snatching it away when he slowly turned to stare pointedly at it. "I need to know these things."

"I'm very stealthy," he said. "Also, she had taken a sleep aid, from the looks of it."

"Ah," Chloe said with a smirk. "So you're not superhuman after all."

He barked out a surprised laugh as he pulled out onto the road. "No, I suppose not." He was silent for a while, his expression pensive. Just when she was about to ask what he was thinking about, he said in a quiet, voice full of velvet and danger, "I can not _wait_ to punish this one."

It almost sounded like he was talking to himself, and she swallowed at his tone of voice. He slid a glance to her though, quick enough to catch the motion, and smiled, his teeth glinting in the light.

"Do I scare you, Detective?"

"No," she said, surprised to realize it was true. "You don't."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go with chapter 4!!! this one........... i hope you guys like this one!!

Lucifer spent the next few weeks with Chloe Decker watching security footage and tailing, hunting Brent Watterson. He could feel his rage grow with every moment spent watching the tapes from the house. Their moments spent together in various expensive cars of his becoming increasingly tense the more they found out about their target. The fact that he beat his wife and child was something he’d been forcing himself not to think about while he was in the car with the Detective. If he had, he would have scared her away with all the growling and yelling he had wanted to do, and then he would have to kill her, and that was something he really didn’t want to do. She was amusing sometimes, and her insight was always welcome, her natural talent as an investigator was something he greatly appreciated. 

It was their last night on their stakeout and their employer had said that Brent would be home alone the next night, something about a vacation for the wife and child. As they sat outside, a little ways down the road, The Devil and his Detective watched their mark as he sat himself at the table for dinner. It was as it was every night. Dinner ready at precisely seven o’clock in the evening, and then, if it hadn’t been up to snuff, as it usually wasn’t according to the man of house, then dear Sasha was in for a beating. Which, inevitably, unfortunately, led to the child, Will, if he remembered correctly, to try and defend her. The boy was only ten. It wasn’t a fair fight. Not that it _could_ be called a fight… (Lucifer knew what the boy had to be thinking, take the attention away from the other person and put it on yourself, protect them at all costs, not matter what. Because no one willingly took a beating like that almost every day unless that’s what they were trying to do, he would know, he’d- No one did that willingly, not at such a young age, not unless they’d seen what could happen to the ones they care about…)

This time, as he and Chloe watched it happen, he couldn’t help the angry, frustrated growl that built in him and he had almost opened the car door when Chloe placed a hand on his arm. “We can’t, remember?” she asked softly. “You said we had to wait…”

Lucifer let out a frustrated growl in her direction, unable to voice his displeasure at being touched, and he knew it was ugly and scary and usually pushed people away, but true to what she had said (that she wasn’t scared of him), she just kept her hand there. He pulled his arm away from her, and they were silent for a long moment. “Sometimes even the Devil has his limits,” he bit out. “When I told you I couldn’t wait to punish this one, I meant it.”

“It’s hard to watch,” she said quietly, watching as the mother cradled the son in her arms, and the man, _Brent_, walked away. He would either go to a bar and pick up a stripper, or he would go into his office and drink. Lucifer thought that the latter was the worse option, because then he would force himself on his wife whether she was fully conscious or not, and Lucifer guessed the sleep aids were a form of self-protection, the less you know about what happens to you the better for some people, but it was still vile and made Lucifer want to tear the man apart.

“It’s harder to live through,” Lucifer gritted out. He could feel Chloe’s eyes on the side of his face, but he ignored them as Brent got into his high-end Audi and started to drive. A dive bar and a stripper it was, then. Lucifer waited a moment, and then followed. 

They were silent for a long moment, and Lucifer hoped that she would ignore what he’d said. He hadn’t meant to say it, not out loud, but this target… Lucifer would be glad to be rid of him. He had a plan and it involved almost all of his tools (and he hoped he could follow it, because it was so very satisfying to think about and would be even better to put into action).

“Lucifer?” she sounded tentative.

“Yes, Detective?”

She was quiet for a long time and Lucifer thought that maybe she wouldn’t say anything, but then she spoke, “What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

Lucifer could tell that she had wanted to know what he had meant, that was something that he would never share with anyone, not with anyone who didn’t know him before he became the Devil. “You’ll watch,” he purred, smirk in place. 

He watched out of the corner of his eye as she rolled both of hers. “I mean, what are you going to do to him,” she asked. 

“Absolutely terrible things, darling,” he said, eager and like velvet.

He pulled into an empty lot across from the strip club that Brent frequented every night he wasn’t at home. Lucifer knew that if he was going to be out the next day that they would have to catch him before or during his trip to the club, though they could do it later, but Lucifer preferred to be back at his club before too late. He knew from his surveillance of the Detective that she usually took an early night when she wasn’t in the car with him. He had no idea why, but he knew that once she was home she rarely left. The one place he hadn’t put bugs was in her home, though he had managed to bug her work computer and her cell, but such as it was.

They sat there for a few hours. Chloe had learned to bring snacks to keep his hands idle, because he learned that she did not like it when he fiddled with everything in the car (even though it was his bloody car). She would snap at him or roll her eyes, but never take her eyes off of the target. It was good that she did of course, but he wished that she would relax a bit. The bastard would be there for a while, like he was every night, Lucifer had half a mind to abduct him as they followed him back to his home. He could do with a few days of torture…

“So, Detective,” he purred at her. “Are you ready for tomorrow?” He waited for her to raise a brow at him. “It will be absolutely…” he paused and licked his lower lip, keeping eye contact with her, “gruesome…” They stared at each other for the longest time. He turned away from her with a smirk. “I _love_ my job, darling…”

He heard her sigh, not her usual annoyed sigh, but a different one. He didn’t check to see if she looked reluctant, she’d made her choice. There was no going back for her. “I’m ready,” he heard her say, her voice hard and determined. If she wasn’t ready tonight, then she would be tomorrow. 

He settled into his seat and munched on the Cool Ranch Puffs his partner had handed him. There was nothing to do but wait and while Lucifer could be patient, he felt he had been patient enough. Maze had found him the job, and he knew only that the… customer wanted this man to suffer. And Lucifer was the best at making men like this one suffer. 

He almost envied the Detective and her seemingly infinite patience. She could sit here night after night and watch for hours. He wondered how she did it, but he didn’t dare ask. She might tell him something about herself by accident and he dare not find out more than he already knew. 

It was hours before they saw their man again and the Detective was the one to tap him on the shoulder. They followed him back to his home, the screens telling them that both his wife and child had gone to bed hours ago. There was little chance that Brent would go after his wife that night, but Lucifer made them stay there after the house settled. They sat there for the longest time, he was making sure that all they would do was sleep, and Chloe perhaps, was doing the same. 

He started the car and drove them to their usual meeting place, the park not far from her home. He had her take the tablet; it was her turn to watch. She was supposed to inform him of all the happenings of the household (the mornings were all the same: breakfast, school, work. The mother stayed home every day and sometimes she did nothing but others she furiously cleaned and went to get groceries). They were supposed to be in the house by the time the Brent gets home, which is what the customer had suggested. Lucifer appreciates that, he can lie in wait like the best of predators. Perhaps the Detective would like it too. 

He drove off, more than ready for the next day. He was too keyed up to rest, so he joined the masses of Lux and writhed with them. He brought a few of them upstairs with him to pass the hours until morning. By the time he got the texts from the Detective, his guests were exhausted. He was just starting, the excitement of what was going to happen, what he would get to do, energizing him. He could hardly wait. He drove to the city and parked himself on a bench outside the Detective’s work. Her car wasn’t there, it was mid-morning, and he knew she was out on stakeout of her own. He had her phone tracked and he knew she would be back soon. He could wait when he wanted to. Today would be filled with waiting, so he would wait here too.

He watched people walk by and through the bugs he’d put in her office, he watched and listened to the Detective’s boss nap at his desk. He was sickened by the man, not letting the best employee he had do what she did best just because she was a woman. He would let the Detective be the best she could be, he would help her become everything she ever wondered that she could be. Against his own will, he wanted her to succeed. He wondered what it would be like to compete against her for a hit. Would she yielded easily, or would she fight him for the lowest of the low. He might have to start bribing Mazikeen if she wanted them for herself. He always got the ones that needed to suffer… He wondered what her method would be… would she follow in his footsteps? Would she be merciful with them? He couldn’t wait to find out. 

He was smirking when her car pulled into the lot attached to the office building. He knew when she saw him, because she froze, barely for a second, and then continued on her way. About twenty minutes later she was back outside and headed straight for him. She sat at the far end on the bench, set the tablet between them, and tore open a disgusting looking vending machine sandwich. “How on earth can you stomach that?” he asked, quietly with a wrinkled nose.

“It’s food,” she sighed. “Why are you here?”

Always straight to business, his Detective. “Just came for my tablet, darling,” he chuckled as she rolled her eyes, and he scooped it up, walking away briskly. As soon as he got to his car, he texted her the plan. Get there early, wait for him, there was no telling what the man would do because he was free of his family. If he deviated from his regular schedule, then they would be waiting for a long time. It had been so long since he had been this ready for a job. Well, he was always ready, but it was rare that he was ever this eager. He was terribly glad, practically gleeful, that this man was absolutely despicable. 

He wouldn’t even have to gag the bastard, not with both houses being empty on either side (and the distance between the surrounding properties was a bonus… he loved to hear them beg). He had checked and they functioned as a summer homes for two nauseatingly rich families. Neither family was due for a visit anytime soon.

He went to go prepare his bag and was glad to see that his guests had already left. He packed everything he thought he might need; he brought an extra pair of gloves and an extra pair of those shoe covers, loads and loads of tarps because it would be… they would need them (and he covered most of the surfaces in the car with plastic covers, the seats and the trunk, they’d need that for when they’d dispose of the body). He didn’t think that his Detective would have those things. He packed almost all of the knives he owned, and he definitely wanted the garrote. Just in case. Pliers for fingernails and teeth if he was feeling particularly brutal. And he was. He texted her about bringing a set of clothes for her to change into. She’d need them, he knew. It was going to get messy.

He was getting restless, impatient. He wanted it to be late enough to meet the Detective at their usual place. He made himself wait. He watched television and played boring games on his phone, finally getting very distracted by a very long, very intricate conspiracy theory video involving the moon landing. He was about to click on another video when he caught the time out of the corner of his eye. He went to change his clothes, not too causal, nice enough for him to blend into the neighborhood, but different from his usual state of dress. 

He grabbed his bag and put it in the passenger seat for the Detective to hold in her lap (he’d picked a more modern, very expensive car for this endeavor). She would want to look, and he still hadn’t decided if he would let her. He broke the speed limit on his way to the park they’d been meeting at and as he parked he watched her walk through the entrance with a bag over her shoulder. With a grin, showing all of his teeth, he slipped out of the car and snuck in behind her like a silent shadow. He followed her to their usual bench but stood in the dark, waiting.

It took her a few moments, but she tensed, and casually, she looked around. Or she tried to make it look casual. She still moved like a cop. But he would rid her of that soon enough. She was a quick study. She looked around for a while, on edge until she looked right at him though it was much too dark in his corner for her to truly see him. 

“Lucifer?” she asked quietly. Her voice was tentative, but there was an undercurrent of steel. 

He rolled his shoulders and appeared out of the dark. “Very good, Detective,” he smirked. She rolled her eyes and his grin widened. “Come now, darling, we should get going.”

He knew she was following him because he could hear her muttering about him being mysterious and annoying and other such things. He tried not to chuckle as she buckled her seatbelt and held the bag in her lap. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she fiddled with the zipper. He wondered if she would unzip it and look, or if she assumed that this was his bag with extra clothes. He knew it felt heavier than that, he knew she could tell, and still, she was hesitating. All too soon, they were parked in the garage of their target’s house. Brent never used the garage, but Sasha did, and her car was gone. Lucifer could tell Chloe was alarmed when he pulled into the garage, but he just slipped on his pair of gloves and put in the password for the security system. 

“Here we are, darling,” he said, opening his bag and handing her a pair of gloves and shoe covers (he also grabbed a few zip ties and slipped them into his pocket). He watched as she pulled them on, taking a moment to admire her very long, very attractive legs (he _was_ a leg man, and her jeans were very tight and it was just a moment, after all, and he winked at her when she caught him, but she couldn’t quite hide her slight smirk even as she rolled her eyes). 

He led her into the house, closing all of the blinds as she watched him. She helped him put out the tarps he’d packed, making sure everything was covered. Lucifer was meticulous with this. It was the details that mattered, that got a person caught. It had been a long time since he’d felt like this during a job (he shuddered in excitement as he set his knives out along the seat of the couch). He wondered if it was about this man being one of the most despicable human’s in existence or if it was because he had an audience. He was very excited to be, shall he say, preforming for an audience. It was something he’d never done before, not with something like this. Sex, sure, in his club, most definitely, but this… this was something he’d never shown to anyone. None of his family had ever wanted to see, had wanted to know what he had done for them. Even if it had been at their request. 

No one had ever watched before and he was more excited than was probably healthy (but he’d never been the poster child for healthy, so perhaps it didn’t really matter either way). His thoughts were interrupted by the Detective asking him, “So now we wait?”

“Now we wait, darling,” he sighed. And then he spent the next hour pacing in front of the couch as they waited for Brent to come home. It was getting dark when they heard the car pull up. Lucifer motioned for Chloe to stay where she was and then went to hide behind the door. As soon as their target had closed the door, Lucifer pounced. “Hello, Brent,” he whispered darkly. 

“Who the fuck are you?!” Brent asked, struggling. But Lucifer was much stronger than he looked and Brent, with his slight beer gut and being a little shorter was no match for him. He was still a pretty fit man, but not fit enough to fight off Lucifer.

“They like to call me the Devil, my dear,” Lucifer purred. He sat the man down and used zip ties to bind him to the chair. He squatted so that he was at eye level with Brent. Brent was breathing fast and his eyes were darting between Lucifer and Chloe. “Are you ready?” he asked, making Brent’s attention snap to him.

“For what?!” the man asked, struggling against his bonds. 

“Your punishment, of course,” Lucifer grinned wide and sinister. He popped up, excited to work, and walked over to the couch. “Now, I’ve no idea why someone hired me to kill you, but I do know that they asked for me personally,” Lucifer chuckled. “When they do that… they expect me to do terrible things…” He picked up one of his knives, long and sharper than any of the others, and turned towards him. “The Devil knows of your sins, my dear,” he growled. 

The color drained from Brent Watterson’s face. He started begging, and Lucifer grinned in pleasure, stalking forwards. He looked up at Chloe, her eyes connecting with his and she looked… he had no idea what she was thinking, but she looked apprehensive. She’d get over that soon enough. Lucifer brought the knife over to Brent and dragged the tip from the base of his ear to his chin. Blood welled up and Lucifer couldn’t stop the excited growl as he watched. “Please stop,” Brent sobbed, “please, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Lucifer grinned. “Everyone’s done something…” he sighed, be brought the knife up to Brent’s neck and pressed lightly, causing more blood to well up. It wasn’t as satisfying as the cut he’d made to his face. “Except perhaps, for our dear Detective in the corner, but there’s time to change that isn’t there, darling?”

Chloe scoffed at him, and he let his tongue play along his teeth. “But you?” Lucifer continued. “You’ve done _so_ many things, Brenty…” And he brought the knife down, gouging it into the meat of the other man’s outer thigh. He pressed harder and harder the louder he screamed. He left the knife there for a moment as he walked back to the couch. He paced for a moment considering the tools in front of him. He grabbed a smaller knife, not as sharp, but just as effective. “You know… I wonder how your son feels when you beat him…” He met eyes with Brent. The other man’s eyes widened, and he started struggling. “Now, now, my dear Brent, no one will hear you,” Lucifer purred and then he rushed in a stabbed his prey in the shoulder, twisting the knife and leaving it there.

The man let out a sharp scream, but Lucifer didn’t relent. He kept twisting until he couldn’t any longer. “Perhaps I should just beat you to death,” Lucifer sighed. “Less blood, more internal injuries…” Lucifer considered this for a moment, the feeling of beating someone to death was satisfying. Lucifer wanted this to last… but he also just wanted to kill the bastard because he was so mad. 

He felt the need to cause more harm, so he grabbed his favorite pair of pliers. He turned back to the Detective and Brent, pliers in hand and a wicked grin on his face. “You won’t be needing your fingernails, will you?” he asked, slipping closer to his prey. 

The other man let out an aborted scream, and Lucifer snarled as he pulled a fingernail off as slowly as he could. It felt _good_ to tear off the bastard’s fingernails, to cause pain. Lucifer growled as he pulled off a few more, just three so that the thumbnail was the only one left. He took a moment to look at the Detective, he couldn’t quite tell what she was feeling, but he thought she must be in shock. She was just staring at them, her mouth a little slack. 

Brent was babbling in pain, and Lucifer couldn’t stop his smirk as he grabbed one of Brent’s fingers and twisted it in his grip, slowly pulling at the same time. Brent started screaming as Lucifer pulled harder and harder. He let out a triumphant laugh as the tendons and skin gave way to his strength. He was breathing heavy, growling on each exhale, licking his lips. He dropped the finger to the floor. 

“That’s my fucking finger!” Brent sobbed. 

“Should I take another?” Lucifer asked on another growl. Brent shook his head and begged Lucifer not to, but that just made Lucifer smirk. “You never stopped for your wife and son when they asked, did you?” he asked, and then he grabbed another one of the man’s fingers as he pleaded with him not to, snot and tears already streaming down his face even though they had barely started. “Come now, Brenty, you’ve told your son that ‘men never cry’. This is a little hypocritical for you isn’t it?” He was slowly pulling the man’s finger off, watching his face with relish. With a deep growl, he pulled the finger off of the other man’s hand and ground out, “You’re not strong or brave are you? Just a pathetic little man, pretending!”

“Please!” Brent begged. “Please, you can’t just- Please!” He was sobbing and slobbering all over himself. 

Lucifer smirked, “I could cut them off instead, but that’s less fun for me, isn’t it?” He pulled the sharper knife out of Brent’s thigh. Lucifer scoffed out a laugh at the other man’s shout of pain. “Thought I’d forgotten about the knife? I’ll have you know, Brenty, I have a _very_ good memory…” And then he took it a drew it down the side of the slobbering man’s neck. “I could kill you now… but we’ve only just started, and you still have all of your teeth,” Lucifer snarled. He stabbed the knife into Brent’s clavicle, through bone and tissue. He drew his arm back and punched the sniveling man in the face. He kept hitting him, but he forced himself to stop after a while. Brent was still breathing. “I suppose you know how your son feels now… All helpless and scared…” He stood and took a moment away from his target. He looked around the room and saw Chloe watching him. He couldn’t quite figure out why she was staring at him, but she was and as soon as his eyes met hers they turned from blue to steel. 

He looked at his tools tempted to go for the garrote, but he wanted it to last longer. He wanted his hands to be covered with this man’s blood, his sins, the evil inside him. He snarled as he grabbed the hammer he’d packed, “Beg all you like, my dear,” Lucifer sighed moving toward the bound man. “Once you start begging for death, though… that’s when you become mine…” Brenty paled and Lucifer licked at his lips again. He started to scream, making Lucifer laugh, “Should I shatter your kneecaps or the bones in your fingers?”

“Please, you can’t!” Brent was begging. More snot and tears, spit and blood covered his face and seeped into the fabric of his shirt. “Please, I can’t- please!”

“I love it when they beg,” he purred., looking over at Chloe. She was watching his hands, so he tightened the one on the hammer, and considered his options. He was exacting when he brought the hammer down on the sniveling man’s fingers, the hand with no missing fingers, of course. The cracking of bones and dull thud of metal against flesh were the only sounds in the room (besides the screams of pain, but Lucifer had learned to ignore those), and when Lucifer finally stopped, he looked up at Chloe and this time her eyes met his. They seemed fathomless to him, their blue color trapping him in whatever she was feeling, though he still had no idea what that was.

“Please, don’t…” Brent sobbed softly. “Please, please!” His breathing was ragged, and it seemed that he’d lost the will to hold his head up or scream. He sounded defeated, but he hadn’t started begging for death. Yet.

Lucifer walked back to his tools and found his favorite knife, sharp but not too long, well made, the wooden handle was a deep glossy black, so black that it seemed like a void between the spaces of his fingers. He flipped it in his hands a few times, the firmness of the handle grounding him just a little. He knew it didn’t seem like it, but he was about to lose it and beat this man to death. It happened when he’d found men like this, the kind that violated people and hurt children (not that Lucifer liked them, children that is, he used to be one of course, but he wasn’t one for the terrible taxing burdens, though he hated to see innocent beings like children being hurt. He just… didn’t like them or want them to be near him). He took a deep breath and turned back to his dear Brenty. “You’re tired, aren’t you, pet?” Lucifer purred as he walked behind his target. Brent sobbed just once making Lucifer smirk. “I’m almost done with you,” he said, low and seductive, “just a little longer…” And as Brent shook with more silent sobs, Lucifer brought the knife up to the bastard’s temple, pressing gently. He slashed it down the side of his face, causing blood to rise and start dripping onto the already filthy shirt Brent was wearing. 

He glanced up at the Detective, her presence pulling at the strings of the knot in his chest, making them a little looser, though he couldn’t say why. With a snarl, he turned away from her and slashed at Brent with the knife, some of the cuts were deep, others superficial. Lucifer paused a moment, breathing hard, and listened to his target’s sobs and cries of pain.

“Please,” Brent rasped in a whisper. “Pl-plea-ease, just kill me…”

At that, Lucifer settled into himself. “Oh, I will,” he growled, his voice dark and deep, holding the promise tightly in its claws, readying for the final attack. He started on the abdomen, steadily beating the exhausted man with his fists. Lucifer was measured at first, but the longer he hit the bastard of a man, the more violent his attack became. He started hitting him in the face, feeling the bones crunching under the force of his fists. He kept hitting until the face it felt like there was nothing under his hands. 

He was breathing hard, and he took a moment to calm himself down. He sighed heavily; his eyes closed until he heard someone shifting their feet. He snarled, meeting eyes with the Detective. Hers were wide and surprised. He shook off the tension and forced his shoulders to relax. When he spoke, it was dark, almost gravelly, and harsh. “Do I scare you now, Detective?”


	5. Chapter 5

"No."

She should have been concerned about that, she knew. His actions—no, don't sugar coat it, tell the truth, his _torture_—should disgust her. She should be calling the cops right now, no matter how long she went to jail. She was a proponent of justice and this wasn't justice. This was revenge.

She should have been concerned about the thrill that had gone through her when Brent started screaming. She should have been concerned about how satisfying it was when he stopped breathing, when Lucifer had pounded his face to a mass of pulp. This wasn't what she had come to him for.

They were the executioner, but should they take so much glee from it? Should they feel _good_ about their job, the way Lucifer clearly did? She should be, at minimum, running for the hills, because if this man turned on her he would draw out her death into something full of suffering.

"You don't."

He was covered in blood. His clothes were drenched with it, his face speckled, his fists dripping. Brent—no, the body, it wasn't a person anymore—was a mangled mess behind him, surrounded by discarded body parts. It would be like a supermarket for Dr. Frankenstein, and she had to swallow down an inappropriate giggle at that.

He didn't scare her. Out of everything she was feeling in that moment, out of the myriad of emotions coursing through her, fear was missing. She searched for it, deep within her, and only found a kind of fascination and satisfaction at what she'd watched him do.

Lucifer was staring at her now, his eyes bright in his face, with something close to shock. His lips quirked in a half-smile before his face turned serious again. He turned back to the body and surveyed the pool of blood surrounding the chair. She wondered if they were going to have to take it with them.

"What now?" she asked. At the minimum, they would probably need to bleach the… the whole thing. They must be taking it with them. Although a missing chair would be obvious, and suspicious, and not something they would want.

"Now we get rid of the body, darling," he said without turning around.

There was something in his voice… She didn't move, but she dearly wanted to see his face, to see what he was thinking. If he was taking a moment or if he was just thinking about what to do next. She felt a strange kinship with him, if he was taking a moment to gather himself. The shock in his eyes a few moments ago had turned her stomach in a strange way. It wasn't sorrow, and she certainly wasn't attracted to him, but she thought maybe he was lonely and she knew how that felt.

He directed her in cleaning up, in gathering the tarps and making sure no blood spilled, in the weak joints in the wooden chair and how to break it down, in collecting body pieces and folding the body itself into a bag. She followed his orders, cleaning from the furthest corner from the door toward it, erasing any mark of their presence.

When they were nearly done, just carrying two large trash bags and his tool bag out with them left, he stopped her. He took off his gloves and motioned for her to do the same, then pulled a bundle of clothing out of the tool bag.

"Time to change, Detective," he said, handing her a pile of clothes that, when she shook them out, looked like they would fit her. They were simple pants and a blouse in dark colors that blood wouldn't show up against.

"How do you know what size I am?" she asked, and he just gave her a long look up and down, making her roll her eyes at him. It should've felt skeevy, having him look at her like that, but she could only dredge up amusement.

"I'm _very_ familiar with the female form," he said, and then looked surprised at her laughter.

It was only a short burst of giggles, nothing that could be considered hysteria, but he still looked like he was going to ask her if she was okay. Instead, she ordered him to turn around—which got her a smirk but he turned anyway—and changed. Her clothes hadn't had much blood on them, but there were spatters from when she had gotten closer to see what he was doing.

To see how he was taking apart the body.

When she turned back to him and was about to hand over her clothes, she hesitated. They had her DNA on them and had blood from the hit on them. It would be so easy for him to use them to connect her to the murder if anything should happen. Or if he just wanted to get rid of her.

He noticed her hesitating and smirked. "Smart," he said, holding out his hand. "But I have no interest in turning you in. And even if I did, I have more than enough dirt on you already." At her narrowed eyes, he added, "For insurance, you understand," and smiled.

She gave him her clothes.

He bundled both sets of their used clothes into his equipment bag, and hefted it along with the trash bag that held the body. When they left, they didn't drive back toward LA, but out into the desert.

Disposing of bodies in the desert was smart, she realized. There was no one out here to see them, the winds would quickly erase all evidence that they had been there at all. Buzzards would pick the body clean of all evidence within-

"Oh god," she groaned. "We're not burying the body, are we?"

He glanced at her, amused. "How else do you propose we make sure no evidence of our involvement in Brent's _very_ timely demise gets out?"

"Buzzards?" she suggested, already knowing it was futile and she was going to be helping dig a grave. And it better be 'helping,' not digging it all on her own. "Coyotes? Tiny flesh-eating lizards?"

He barked a laugh and the surprise on his face had her snickering and saying, "Fine, but I'm not digging the grave alone."

"It's hardly a grave," he said, turning off the road. "We don't need to dig that deep."

"Alright," she said, and settled back in the seat as best she could with all the bumping and jolting the car was doing.

Burying a body, no matter how shallow the grave, was hard work. By the time the sun was rising on the horizon, she had sweated through her shirt, unused to the physical labor. Lucifer seemed unaffected, like he dug graves every day. Hell, as far as she knew, he did.

She paused as Lucifer was smoothing over the top of the sand and then stomping on it, not able to return it to the hard-packed state it has been before they attacked it with their shovels, but tamping it down nonetheless. The hole they had dug wasn't shaped like a typical grave—too round and too small to hold a full body—but was just big enough to put Brent Watterson's remains to rest.

She wondered if maybe she should say a couple words, acknowledge his passing. He wasn't a good person, and he had clearly made some powerful enemies, but he had still _been_ a person, after all.

Actually, no, good riddance to bad trash.

She bundled her shovel in the back of the car and walked away.

* * *

Lucifer dropped her at her house in time for her to pay the babysitter and get Trixie ready for the day. She'd added Dan's number to the list of numbers on the fridge for in case they couldn't reach her. It wasn't the best solution—Dan wasn't reliable enough, really, to be trusted to pick up even if it was a call coming from the house phone—but it was all she had. 

"Can we have pancakes for breakfast?" were the first words out of Trixie's mouth when Chloe woke her up.

Chloe pulled her into a hug and planted a messy kiss on her head. "Sure, monkey. Get dressed fast so you have time to eat, okay?"

Trixie grumbled, but had already jumped out of bed and was pulling on the clothes Chloe had left out for the morning right before she left. She went to the kitchen to heat the griddle and check the news on her tablet. To see if anyone had noticed that Brent was missing yet.

It was too early, though, for that, so there was nothing in the news. And she probably shouldn't be searching for him, in case she became a suspect in his murder. Or any other murder. No, she'd have to wait to come across it organically, no matter how much it pained her to do so.

Work was difficult that day, not because it was _hard_—it was never hard, and that was part of the problem—but because she was so tired. Staying up all night wasn't like when she had been studying for school. She was too old for this shit. It ended up not mattering, because she got enough pictures of the guy she was following with his side piece to leave for the day and take a nap anywhere but the office.

Her boss would never let her live it down if he caught her napping at the office, and just might fire her.

So she grabbed her laptop and took it home with her, dropping it off on the kitchen table with her camera and going straight to bed. While she slept she had weird disjointed dreams about blood waterfalls and fingers raining from the skies. But she slept deeply and felt refreshed when she woke up, something rare for a nap.

It was just in time for Trixie to get home, too. So she got up, fixed her hair, and resolved not to think about dreams or the clack of pliers or the wet sound of Lucifer's fists hitting Brent's face while she was with her daughter. Instead, they went to the park and then to the zoo. That was plenty to keep her mind off what she'd witnessed. What she'd been ready to help with.

As she watched Trixie feeding a giraffe, she wondered if what she was doing made her a bad mother. She knew she wasn't necessarily a _good_ mother—she worked long hours sometimes, and left Trixie with babysitters probably more than she should—but that was a long way from being a bad one. This, though. This might qualify her. If she got caught, Trixie would go to Dan, and that was definitely a worse option than her.

But after seeing Lucifer work, after getting a taste of what dealing with bad people the old fashioned way could feel like, she didn't know if she could stop. First hit's free, after all.

She would just have to make sure she didn't get caught and Lucifer didn't have any reason to turn on her.

* * *

She didn't keep the burner on her all the time, but she did check it at least once a day for any contact from Lucifer. There was nothing for weeks, and she had almost decided that he'd given up on her, decided she wasn't worthy. The idea had her stomach rolling uncomfortably at odd times. It wasn't that she had liked him—she barely knew him, and what she did know wasn't exactly _nice_—but she had… respected him. Respected his skill.

Then she got a text.

_715_

That was all it said. It took her a moment of staring at it, puzzled, before she realized it was probably a time to meet him in the park. And it probably meant today. She had… Less than ten minutes to find a babysitter and get there. Great. She needed to start checking this thing earlier in the day if he was going to demand same-day meetings like this.

Luckily, her neighbor was home and she was able to watch Trixie for a while. If Lucifer wanted her to go out tonight, she'd just have to tell him no. It wouldn't be unreasonable to ask for some notice. If he did any research on her at all he would know she had a child and couldn't just drop everything to go to him. Was this some kind of test?

If so, she was going to rip him a new one.

When she reached the park though—three minutes early—he was already sitting on the bench they'd met at last time, ankle resting on a knee and arms spread over the back, taking up all the room and discouraging people from trying to sit there. As she stood and observed him for a moment, more than one person cast him a disapproving glance. He didn't seem to notice.

"Detective," he said quietly when she finally walked up and sat down next to him. They must look like a couple enjoying the evening together. She didn't know what to think of that. "Like what you see?"

"Just wondering if there's space for me on this bench with your ego."

He laughed and glanced at her, a half smile quirking his lips. "Consider it deflated."

He handed her a folder like last time. This one held a name, photo, and date two weeks in the future. She jerked when she realized she recognized the name.

"This is a _congressman_," she hissed. "Are you kidding?"

"I'd never kid about murder," he said, but the smile on his face said different.

"Let me guess," she said. "He's going to be in town on that date and you're to take him out?"

"'Take him out'?" he quoted back at her. "You make it sound like I'll be treating him to a nice dinner."

"Fine, kill him, whatever," she said. "Who hired you?"

"Does it matter?" he asked, and he sounded genuinely curious, not like he was trying to make a point.

"Y-" she started to say, indignant, but then stopped to think about. _Did_ it matter? Lucifer was going to kill him regardless, and it would be a good learning opportunity for how to evade bodyguards. "I guess not."

"I did dig into it," Lucifer said, his eyes on a woman throwing a ball with her son a few yards in front of them. They were getting too close for Chloe's comfort, but she still took her cue from him and didn't get up to leave. "I can't say for certain, but it appears to be his opposition."

"The election isn't for another two years," she pointed out, following his gaze to a pair of young people kissing on a bench on the other side of the park.

"Perhaps he just wants to cross it off his to-do list." Lucifer turned to her, and when she met his gaze, he looked serious. "Is this going to be a problem?"

"He does good work for the city," she said slowly, "and I don't like his opponent's politics, but…" She stopped to think about it, _really_ think about it. There were going to be jobs that she didn't agree with, she was sure. And if she said that it _was_ a problem, that didn't mean Lucifer wasn't going to kill him. Just that she wasn't going to be there to learn from it. "But I suppose not."

"Excellent," he said with a devilish grin. "Why don't you come to mine tomorrow. I can show you what I've found."

She found herself nodding and agreeing before he dismissed her—which, rude—and she left to go home and tuck in her kid.

* * *

When she got to Lux the next night, he was entertaining a small group of women on the sidewalk in front of the building. When he saw her, his smile briefly morphed into something she might almost call genuine before he had made his excuses to the ladies and was walking over to her.

"Darling," he said and she appreciated him using neither her real name nor her codename out in the open.

He offered her his arm, and she took it. They bypassed the line waiting to get in and went around the back to a more private door. She dropped his arm as soon as they were out of sight of the clubgoers, and he smirked at her. Something in his eyes had grown colder, it seemed, in between him saying hello and reaching the door.

They didn't talk as they rode the elevator up and up to the penthouse. He clearly wasn't in the mood for smalltalk, no matter what he had seemed like out front. When they reached the top, he went straight to the bar and poured himself a drink before turning to offer her one, which she declined.

"Rough night?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, and he chuckled, a dark sound that didn't answer her question.

"You'll be pleased with what I've found," he said, and led her over to a set of leather couches where a tablet was on a side table. He picked it up and keyed in the code before handing it to her.

She scanned the first document, then flipped to the next, and the next, and the next. There was a section of receipts that she scanned through, and then two different copies of his charity foundation's books that she didn't.

"You're kidding," she said finally when she looked over to him.

"Not in the slightest," he said.

"But sick kids? Really?"

"Really." He had sprawled across the space next to her and was staring into his glass of whiskey. "You understand not every hit is going to be this serendipitous, right?"

"Of course," she said, then frowned. "Did you- did you look into this for me?"

He laughed and stood, moving away from her to refill his drink. "Hardly," he said and she let it go.

There was no more information for her on the tablet, so she put it down and turned back to him. He was leaning against the bar, watching her. His tumbler of whiskey was half empty, and he took another slow sip as their eyes met. His were colder and emptier than his glass, but she was starting to think that didn't mean there was nothing going on behind them.

"What's next?" she asked, holding his gaze. It had been disconcerting at first, but she was starting to get used to it. "How are we going to get him? There'll be bodyguards, right? What do we do with them?"

He smiled, slow and shark-like. Something flickered in his eyes before he nodded and motioned her to bring the tablet over.

"He has a bodyguard going to and from the hotel," he said, pulling up another file on the tablet.

She leaned over to see what it was, bracing herself with a hand on his bicep. It was firm under her fingers and she had to resist giving it a squeeze. He had frozen under her hand, and she wondered when the last time someone had gotten close to him like this was. And then immediately felt foolish. He certainly hadn't been lacking for company when she was trying to get him to take her on as an apprentice.

She let her hand drop and instead took the tablet from him to study the map. It showed a route going from the hotel he was staying at to a-

"Is that the Children's Hospital," she asked flatly. "Is he going to do a meet-and-greet at a hospital he's skimming donation money from?"

"It appears so," Lucifer said. He handed her the tablet and picked up his drink again.

She studied the route. It was a pretty straight line from the hotel to the hospital. If they were a team, there were a couple places she could see where they could force a reroute on the way back, but with just the two of them, that wouldn't work. She supposed they could deal with the limo driver and replace him, but that would require dumping a car eventually.

"Are we going to take him from his hotel room?" she finally asked.

"Very good, Detective" Lucifer murmured and she thought maybe he looked pleased. And she thought maybe that pleased her. "Taking him on the way to or from the event is far too complicated when we can take him from the hotel before his flight."

"Will he have a bodyguard with him then?" she asked, idly tapping her finger on the edge of the tablet, thinking. It would be more complicated if he did and there wouldn't be any sort of grace period where nobody was looking for him.

"No," he said. "Only to and from the event. Your marshals-" he looked mildly amused at that "-apparently don't think there will be a problem at the airport."

"So we grab him, and then…" she asked, drifting off and waiting for him to fill the silence.

"And then the fun begins." He smiled wickedly at her and drained the rest of his whiskey, setting the glass down with a thunk on the bar. "And what fun it will be."

* * *

“Christ, can’t you do this _one thing_ for me, Dan?” Chloe ran her hand through her hair in agitated frustration and strongly considered throwing her phone against the wall.

Dealing with the congressman was going to take the afternoon and most of the night, according to Lucifer. She had thought Dan, who had been making noises about getting more chances to see Trixie, would jump on the opportunity to have her for the day and night.

She should have paid more attention to his phrasing. He’d wanted more _opportunities_, not actual visits. He didn’t want to spend time with Trixie, just the ability to visit when it suited him and leave her disappointed and wondering why her daddy didn’t love her the rest of the time.

It certainly didn’t help that Chloe did her best to never ask him for anything. Especially not now that they were divorced. She knew how reliable he was, and she knew how willing he was to be inconvenienced, and she knew just how little he cared about helping her.

But to say she was livid was an understatement.

“Come on, Chlo,” he said in that voice that made her want to scream, the one that said that he was being reasonable and she was being a harpy. “You know I can’t just get time off whenever I feel like it.”

“That’s funny,” she said, pacing to the window to look out at the night sky. There were no stars that she could see, just a faint glow about it from the city lights, “because I remember being able to.”

“They need me here,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a big case and I can’t just up and leave for a day.”

She closed her eyes and took a slow breath, counting to ten as she did. Right, they needed him. Of course they did and of course his job was more important than his family, and this was why they had gotten a divorce. Never mind the lies and the put-downs and making her feel like she was crazy. The way he never had time for them—for either of them—had been the last straw.

“I cannot say no to this stakeout,” she finally said, enunciating her words like that would make him understand better. Like there was anything that could make him understand better. “I am asking you to take your daughter for twenty-four hours—ten of which she will be either in school or with the babysitter—and you can’t manage that?”

“It’s an important case,” he said in that tone of voice again. “It’s important for my career.”

“Important for your-” she stopped. Breathed in. Breathed out. “Right. And your daughter isn’t.”

“That’s not what I said,” Dan was saying as Chloe turned around and met Trixie’s eyes, peering around the corner. Great.

“Whatever,” she said as Trixie’s head disappeared and the sound of a door slamming echoed through the house. “I’ll find a babysitter. Thanks for nothing.”

She slammed her phone on the counter and turned back to the window until she had her breathing under control. She couldn't see the stars, not in LA. She wondered what it looked like, the night sky over the salt flats in Utah, an entire galaxy spinning overhead that didn’t care about her or her problems. Cold and unfeeling.

And she found herself thinking of another empty space, with flickers of humanity so far in the back that she wasn’t sure she wasn’t imagining them.

She shook her head and went to find Trixie.

Her little monkey was laying in bed, her face buried in her pillow, shoulders shaking. It broke Chloe’s heart, knowing there was nothing she could do to make this better for her.

So she sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh and placed a hand on Trixie’s back. Her little body was shaking with the force of her silent sobs, and in that moment, if she thought she could get away with it, she would’ve made her first official hit be Dan.

“Your dad…” she started, trying to think of something to say that she hadn’t said a hundred times before. “He loves you so very much, but his job-”

Trixie shot up, knocking Chloe’s hand off her back, her tear-stained face set in an angry glare. “Don’t lie!” she yelled. “You’re always lying for him!”

“Oh, baby,” she said and opened up her arms.

Trixie fell into them with a sob and clung to her, and Chloe couldn’t do anything for her beyond hold on tight.

* * *

Getting to the congressman proved no problem. Lucifer showed up in a black town car and handed her a pile of clothes, directing her to the backseat to change while he drove.

She quickly shimmied into the black pants, button-down, and black jacket. Lucifer was wearing something similar, with an added tie and shoulder holster that was empty. She got the sense that he didn’t like using guns. Her clothing fit perfectly—professional-looking, but comfortable and easy to move in—and she wondered just how many women Lucifer slept with to make him this good at figuring out her size.

Then she leaned between the two front seats—carefully not noticing how well Lucifer’s clothes fit him—and said, “So we’re going in as bodyguards?”

“He won’t question needing to be moved to a second location,” he said, handing her back a pair of shades.

She checked herself in the rearview mirror and decided to pull her hair back more tidily. So she sat back and pulled out her hair-tie and shook out her hair. When she looked up, hair-tie between her teeth and one hand already buried in her hair to start pulling it back, Lucifer was watching her.

His eyes were dark but not empty, not this time.

After a moment she dropped her gaze, focusing on scraping her hair back into a tight ponytail. When they walked through the hotel, no one gave them a second glance. It was upscale enough that they weren't the only black-suited people in dark sunglasses passing through, she bet.

The congressman was on one of the upper floors and Chloe kept her eyes on the flashing numbers, not giving in to the continued urge to give Lucifer a good onceover. She could probably do it, too, with the dark sunglasses hiding her gaze. But she had the feeling he wouldn't let her live it down if he caught her staring again.

They didn't talk as they rode up, already in their characters. When the elevator opened, Lucifer went straight for the door at the end of the hall. There was a maid in the hall and they passed close enough to her that Lucifer's arm brushed her side. He murmured an apology and kept moving.

When they were a couple steps down the hall, he flashed a keycard at her. When she cocked an eyebrow at him he mouthed, "Service elevator."

He rapped on the door and seemed to slide into a completely different person. His posture shifted, his arms hung loose and ready at his sides, he looked like a bodyguard. If she could see his eyes, she would bet that they had come full of life.

"Congressman," Lucifer said, and even his voice was different. It was softer, more silky, more personable. She would have trusted that voice if she didn't know who was using it. He knocked again. "Congressman Fuller."

The door opened to reveal the congressman, In suit pants and a shirt with the tie loosened. He looked tired and Chloe felt a momentary pang of sympathy.

"Yes?" he asked, leaning against the door frame and keeping the door open with his foot.

"Congressman," she said, taking her cue from Lucifer. "We've received a credible threat to your safety and need to move you until your flight tomorrow."

He heaved a sigh and turned, calling, "Let me pack my things, I'll be a minute."

Lucifer turned his back to the door, taking up station on one side, so Chloe took the other. She folded her hands in front of her and settled into a ready stance, like she was an officer on guard detail again. It felt uncomfortable now, like a suit that didn't quite fit.

When the congressman came back out, Lucifer led him to the service elevator, Chloe following behind, and swiped the maid's card. The congressman tried to ask what was going on, but Lucifer just made noncommittal noises and Chloe stayed silent.

They took him down through to the basement and into the car, Lucifer up front driving and her sliding in after the congressman.

"Detective," Lucifer said.

The congressman barely got out, "Det-" before Chloe pistol-whipped him. It was a good hit, and he slumped against the door, out cold. Lucifer took off his sunglasses so she followed suit and he met her eyes in the rearview with the tiniest of smiles.

"That's quite an arm, Detective," he said and she sat back with a satisfied smile.

* * *

It took some time for the congressman to wake up even after they had him tied to a chair in an abandoned construction site. It wasn't far enough away from civilization to let him scream, so Chloe had gagged him while Lucifer tied his arms.

When he woke up, the first thing he did was try to talk his way out of it.

"No one can understand you," Chloe said, crossing her arms over her suit. "But go ahead and try."

He did, and he struggled, and it sounded like he tried to curse them too. None of it was any use and she could see the moment Lucifer got bored. He had been standing, slouched against a post, just outside the congressman's peripheral vision. When he straightened, Chloe stepped back.

"Now," he said, and the congressman's eyes snapped to his. "We have a bit of a trip after this, so you'll excuse me if I don't draw this out as much as I'd like."

The congressman shrank against the chair as Lucifer prowled closer. His eyes flicked between Lucifer and her, and he started making louder noises, trying to bargain Chloe assumed. It wasn't working.

There wasn't enough fear in his eyes, though, in Chloe's opinion. He didn't think they were serious. He had no idea what Lucifer had planned for him. And he thought he as going to get out of this alive.

Wasn't that the problem with men like him? They thought nothing could touch them. They thought they could do whatever they wanted, to whoever they wanted, and no one could do anything about it. He thought he was untouchable.

Lucifer was about to show him he was very touchable, and she was going to enjoy every second of it.

Lucifer had a pair of pruning shears in his hand and he idly flipped them a couple times as he strolled over, coming to a stop off to the side of the congressman, where he had to turn his head slightly to keep Lucifer in view, but not so far in front that Chloe wouldn't be able to see what he was doing.

"Stop talking," Lucifer said and, when the muffled attempts to talk only increased, he flipped the shears one more time and then slashed them down the side of the congressman's head.

She was pretty sure the noise he let out was a scream. Lucifer just looked mildly pleased, but there was a fire in his eyes that made a shiver run down her spine.

"I heard-" Lucifer said, running the shears down the other side of the congressman's face. He tried to flinch away from it, but Lucifer grabbed his hair, jerking his head back. "-that someone has sticky little fingers."

The congressman shook his head frantically, making garbled noises.

"Now, now," Lucifer said and tapped the congressman's nose with the shears. "None of that. It's not going to save you."

He let go of the congressman's hair with a shove downward. His chin hit his chest and he made a noise that was more surprise than pain. That was going to change, and quickly. Chloe found herself ready, leaning forward a little to watch the line of blood that was slowly dripping down the congressman's cheek with a kind of sick fascination.

The cut was shallow, and it wouldn't need stitches if this had been a situation where he would have survived. But it was the harbinger of things to come and he really should have been much more scared than he was. He was watching Lucifer with fear in his eyes, sure, but it wasn't _terror_ yet.

Which was what he should feel. Utter terror at what was to come. Utter terror at being helpless in the hands of someone like Lucifer. He may not know who Lucifer was, or what he was like, but the pants-wetting terror should have been there.

Lucifer looked to her and nodded his head to the congressman, but she just shook her head. This was still his realm, she knew, and she wasn't ready to become a part of it. Maybe at the end... but right then? Right then she wanted to watch.

The thought should sicken her, she knew. It was more points against her being a good person, this willingness—no, this _eagerness_—to see violence done unto someone who deserved it. But she just… couldn't find it in her.

She tried to rationalize it away as she watched Lucifer circle behind the congressman to trace the shears down the other cheek, not quite drawing a line of blood but indenting the skin enough that a bright red welt rose up after them. As long as she wasn't participating, as long as she was just observing, did it matter?

As long as she wasn't the one torturing people, did enjoying seeing awful people in pain really mean she was that terrible of a person? Killing wouldn't be hard. She had killed Malcolm with little remorse, only a vague sense of horror that faded with time. Would this be any different?

She didn't think so, but she thought maybe—as much as she wasn't ready to be a part of the torture—she might be ready to try.

Lucifer finally spoke, leaning in to talk right into the congressman's ear. "Which finger should I start with, mm?"

The congressman made a noise, derisive like he didn't believe Lucifer was going to go that far. His eyes flicked toward the entryway—a door frame that held no door—like he thought help was going to come for him.

Nothing was coming, not a rescue, not a savior. There was just them and Lucifer's bag of tools. He was at their mercy. One more corrupt government official, only this time, someone was doing something about it.

When Lucifer lined the shears up with a finger and slipped it gently between the blades, it looked almost like a caress. He hadn't taped the congressman's hands, only his wrists, so he was free to try to jerk his finger out of the way. To angle his hand as far to the side as he could get it. But with Lucifer slowly drawing the shears down until they settled at the base of his pinky finger, there was little he could do.

And then Lucifer snipped off the finger. The congressman shrieked, surprise and fear and no little amount of pain in his voice. Lucifer looked back at Chloe and licked his lips, and she found herself smiling back at him. There was something… sickly satisfying about seeing a man who stole from sick children getting a punishment that fit the crime. She half hoped that Lucifer was going to take his hands before the end, treat him like he was a thief in the olden days.

She hadn't thought that type of eye-for-an-eye justice would appeal to her. And maybe, back in the early days, when she was still a bright-eyed cadet, it wouldn't have. But now that she had seen the guts of the system, now that the sheen had been worn off her, she just wanted people like the congressman to get their due.

She watched as Lucifer went to the next finger, and the next. She bore silent witness as blood spurted onto the tarps they'd laid down, as the congressman screamed and screamed and screamed into the gag. His eyes rolled wildly around in their sockets and snot dripped from his nose. He was probably in danger of suffocating, but Chloe couldn't bring herself to care.

"The hand next?" Lucifer asked, pulling out a length of rope, she assumed to use as a tourniquet. It wouldn't do if the victim died too quickly, after all. "Or perhaps the fingers of your other hand?"

The congressman was shaking his head, making noises behind his gag like he was begging, pleading. His eyes were hazy with pain and tears, and his face red from screaming.

"The hand," she said quietly, her voice barely rising over the sound of the congressman's muffled babbling.

Lucifer cast her a look that she thought was almost surprise, before it morphed into something closer to approving. They locked gazes for an endless moment before he turned his attention back to the matter at hand.

"Excellent, Detective," he finally said and went to his bag of tools, selecting a sharp blade.

Then he turned back to the congressman. He wrapped the rope around the congressman's forearm and pulled tight, pulled until his muscles were bulging under his shirt sleeves and the congressman was screaming into his gag again.

"Now, this is going to hurt, but I promise it won't bleed as much as you'd expect."

He started struggling again, given strength anew by the prospect of losing a hand. Lucifer just smiled at him and brought the knife down.

* * *

It took a long time for Lucifer to be done playing with the congressman. Long enough that Chloe was starting to get bored. When he was finally ready for the kill, he turned to her with a cocked eyebrow, holding out a garrote.

"Do you want to do the honors?"

She stepped forward, carefully walking around a puddle of blood. There were booties over her shoes but she still didn't want to go through it. There was something off-putting about walking through that kind of mess.

"What do I do?"

She knew the theory of using a garrote, had seen the aftereffects of using it on a person. But she'd never had cause to use one herself, to see it used, or have to prevent one from being used on her.

Lucifer motioned for her to come behind the congressman and stand in front of him. She did and he handed her the length of wire with handles on each end.

"It goes around the neck like so," he said, leaning over her and guiding her hands to where they should be.

She shivered at the feeling of his body so close to hers, his chest against her back, his legs brushing hers. His hands were bloodstained but gentle, his touch whisper-soft. They left sparks of electricity in their wake, and she wondered if he was feeling that too.

When she started to wonder what those hands would be like on the rest of her body, she ruthlessly wrenched her mind away from the subject.

He was a hitman. She had a life and a daughter outside of this, and she doubted he would be able to fit into that kind of life. He wasn't someone she could bring him to meet her mother, or someone she could go to her father's grave to talk about. And while she was sure he would be okay with a fling, she knew herself well enough to know that she didn't do one night stands.

When he stepped back and told her to pull, she did, tightening the garrote around the congressman's neck until it was cutting into his flesh. She held for what seemed like forever, almost losing her grip once when he started to jerk and flail as best he could, what with being tied to the chair. The death throes.

She'd never witnessed them at such close hand before, and was unnerved to find that she wasn't particularly bothered by them. His body jerked, sure, but he was well on his way into Death's hands by then.

When his body finally fell still, she went to let go, but Lucifer had her hold it another minute, just to be safe. It took a surprising amount of muscle to strangle a man, and when Lucifer finally let her stop, she had to shake out her arms after handing the garrote back to him.

She felt a curious sort of emptiness when she poked at her feelings. It wasn't that _she_ felt empty. It was like the place where she should have been feeling disgusted with herself just wasn't there. Instead, there was only a sense of satisfaction.

Lucifer was watching her, waiting for her reaction. As she turned to him, she could feel a slow smile spreading over her face. She had done it. She'd crossed that first hurdle. She'd killed this man in cold blood and it felt… _good_.

"Cleanup?" she asked.

Lucifer matched her smile with one of his own. "Cleanup," he confirmed.

* * *

"You have a boat," Chloe said, staring at him as they parked at the marina.

"A yacht," he corrected like that was the important thing there. "And of course. We're going on a midnight cruise."

"Great," she muttered and went to pull the giant duffel bag out of the back of the towncar.

It wasn't that she didn't like boats. It was just that she'd rarely had a chance to be on them and they… didn't always agree with her stomach. At least the waters were looking flat tonight.

She couldn't manage the duffel bag alone, which did not bode well for her taking jobs alone. Lucifer had to help with the bag, and together they managed to get it onto his yacht.

She didn't know if it was a big yacht; she didn't know much about boats in general. But it _looked_ big to her. It looked unnecessarily big. Who could possibly need that much room on a boat?

Once they were on open ocean and she was starting to feel a little green around the gills, she turned to Lucifer. "Is this how you usually dispose of bodies?"

His eyes flicked out toward the black waters surrounding them for a moment before focusing back on her. "No," he admitted. "I have a service that does the removal for me."

"You have a body removal service," she said flatly. "And we're lugging around bodies in duffel bags… why?"

"It builds character," he said, coming to lean next to her on the rail, and she smacked him on the arm. "Alright, no need for violence. You should know how to dispose of a body properly. That's all."

He paused for a moment, turning to look out to sea, before saying, "I… suppose I can set up a meeting for you with the owner. He takes a cut of your pay, but he's fair about it."

She studied him for a moment, his profile, the way the ocean reflected in his dark eyes. He didn't shift under her gaze, but she thought maybe that he wanted to.

"Thank you," she said quietly, turning to look out to the sea beside him. "I'd appreciate that. Also," she added after a moment, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"Not on my yacht you're not," he said, sounding aghast, and her laughter chased the nausea away.

* * *

In the end, they wrapped the body in chicken wire—to keep bits from floating off as it decomposed but still allow the fish to eat the bones clean—and chains. She helped roll the body into the wire and attach cement blocks to it. Then Lucifer heaved the package over the side and they both watched it sink into the darkness below.

"You'll set up a meeting with the body disposal guy?" she asked quietly as they returned to the cockpit.

He nodded and tossed an amused glance back to her. "Getting impatient, are we?"

"I just don't want to have to bury another body," she said, rolling her eyes a little at him as she settled into a seat and he aimed the boat for home.


	6. Chapter 6

Lucifer had told Chloe that he would send her a text the next time they were to meet up. What he didn’t tell her was that that meeting wouldn’t be for another job. She was quick on the uptake and much more… prepared for the more gruesome aspects of the job than others. He decided that it was time for her to learn the tools of the trade. 

He was going to ask Maze to help him and was waiting for her answer before he texted the Detective. He hoped that she would catch on quickly. Most firearms would be easy for her to master, but she might struggle with other weapons. He would have to ask Maze to help him if he wanted her to be skilled in knife play. He smirked; she would definitely appreciate seeing his Detective in action. 

He picked up the phone and dialed. He smirked when she answered, “Mazikeen, my dear, would you like to join me in some combat and weapons training?” At her answer, his smirk widened into an absolutely wicked grin. “Excellent, my dear,” he purred. He was more than ready to teach his Detective some new tricks.

He picked her up at their usual spot, the park had been seeing a lot of them lately, perhaps it was time for a new meeting place. The Detective was used to finding him in the dark there, maybe she could find him in the darkness wherever they went. He hoped that she would. This time her eyes met his instantly and he was… they were so blue and her gaze was so intense… He’d never… they caught him and held him there, but only for a moment. No matter how many times he encountered her, he couldn’t seem to get used to them. He forced himself to brush past it and purred a greeting as she rolled those eyes of hers at him. Lucifer smirked as she got into his car. At least they had the routine down.

He didn’t tell Chloe anything about where they were going, but he did chat with her about her weapons experience. It was just as he thought it would be, mostly guns and a little hand to hand. They would get deeper into that later of course, but at least she had experience in it. 

He would give anything to see her with a knife in her hands. It was part of why he’d asked Maze to help him. The things she did with a blade were absolute works of art, and he would be… pleased if even a little bit of those skills were passed on to the Detective. She would be so deadly with a blade in her hand, blood staining her clothes. She would look so perfect covered in blood and dancing around with a knife in her hand. He had to stop thinking about it or he would definitely get an erection and it was a bad time for that sort of thing. He was excited to show her all of his toys that he’d collected over the years. He’d been collecting since before he stopped working for his father. 

Once they reached Maze’s bunker (it was really more of a heavily reinforced warehouse where the two of them have always kept their weapons, he and Maze went way back), he rushed around the car to open the Detective’s door for her. She rolled her eyes at him, but he had seen her lips curl up in the corners. He was growing on her, he could tell. 

“Where are we?” she asked, eyeing him with something like suspicion, but lighter. It was like she was teasing him. 

He smirked at her in return, “That would ruin all the fun, Detective!” 

She sighed and rolled her eyes at him, making him hide a grin as he turned away from her. She followed him a little closer than she usually would, perhaps, but he didn’t let her know that he knew that. He liked her close to him, anyway. “Lucifer,” she started quietly, like when they were on a job together, sneaking around (and he had trained her so very well in such a short time that sometimes she would surprise him), “what are we doing here?” 

He opened the door and bowed his head, letting her through. “Welcome to Hell, darling,” he chuckled. Her eyes went from his to the weapons lining the wall, and he huffed out a laugh when he realized how she might take that, with him being the Devil and all. “This is where I keep my… supplies,” he explained. He put a hand on her back and led her into the room. That was, of course, the moment a knife embedded in the wall next to Chloe’s head. She jumped back and he caught her by the elbows, and he had to stop himself from weaving an arm around her waist and pulling her out of the way. He knew who it was after all. He chuckled deeply in her ear and he felt her shudder against him. “That’s just Mazikeen, my darling Detective,” he purred, turning her to face the woman on the other side of the room. 

Mazikeen was lounging against the wall with a smirk, caressing the sharp edge of a knife. “Is this the gift you promised me?” she asked, licking her lips and looking Chloe up and down. 

Chloe backed into his arms further and Lucifer smirked down at her over her shoulder. “Now, now, Maze, I’m sure she’ll be more than excited to play with you later,” he made sure he sounded teasing and seductive. He did love it when Chloe would roll those beautiful eyes of hers. “I was going to have her show me what she can do with a firearm, if you’d like to watch, that is…”

“Watching’s not really my thing, Lucifer,” Maze said with a raised brow. 

“Oh, I know, my dear,” Lucifer chuckled, seductive in the way he let his eyes linger on her. “You’ll get in on the action later, her knife skills will need some work.”

Maze bit her lip and looked Chloe up and down once more. “I guess she’ll do,” she said, and then she turned and walked away, taking the knife she was flipping in her hand with her. 

Lucifer led the Detective over to another room in the warehouse, this one had guns all along the wall and a shooting range built in. “Completely sound proof, of course,” he told her when he noticed her gaping at the setup. 

“Weapons training,” she said. “We’re doing weapons training.”

“And hand to hand, but that will be later this week,” he told her. “But guns and knives will be enough for today. I’d hate to tire you out, my darling Detective,” he was back to grinning at her, predatory and with all of his teeth. 

She rolled her eyes again (and he felt like he was going for some sort of record, that was twice in the last twenty minutes) and scoffed at him. “I’d like to see you try,” she said.

“Oh, darling, you have _no_ idea how much I’d love to,” and he knew he was laying it on a little thick, but she was just so much fun to annoy.

She shook her head at him, and he motioned to the guns that lined the wall with a sarcastic bow. He let her examine the weapons as long as she liked, let her take her time picking what gun she’d like to show him her skills with. He thought she would so with the type she usually carried, but she skipped over the Glocks on the wall and reached for one of the smaller Smith and Wesson handguns. He didn’t say a word as he watched her. She was confident in her movements and when she brought the target to the front of the range, her grouping was almost as good as one of Maze’s, or his, for that matter. He smirked; this was going to be fun…

He picked a gun off of the wall and brought it to her. He set in on the table in front of her, looking at her over her shoulder. She jumped as her back hit his front, and he put his hands on her waist as he asked, “How are you with a rifle, my darling?”

“Not… not great?” she offered. “We trained with them at the academy.” She was biting at the inside of her lip, and Lucifer had to make himself stop growling as she did it. 

“You can hit the target, but not like that?” he asked nodding to the paper dummy next to her. She shook her head. “We’ll have to train you after all,” he smirked. 

“Lucifer,” she sighed, and he could sense her apprehension. 

“I don’t bite, Detective,” he told her, but he didn’t back away from her, wasn’t sure that he could. “At least, not if you don’t ask me to. Your teeth, however, can sink themselves into me wherever you’d like them to…” She huffed at him and he didn’t let her push him away. “Here,” he told her, picking up the rifle again. “You already know how to hold it, you just need to get used to shooting it again, don’t you?” 

“Right,” she nodded to herself. When she grabbed it from him, he moved closer so that his hips were tight against hers and he could correct her stance if necessary. “And you being this close is necessary?” she asked after she made herself relax against him.

“Of course not,” he chuckled, but he didn’t back away even as she elbowed him in the side. “You do have to be able to focus even with a distraction, you know…”

“Oh, is that what you’re trying to be?” she asked him with a smirk of her own. 

Lucifer scoffed out a laugh. “Higher,” he told her, helping her bring the gun up so that she had it resting where it was supposed to against her shoulder. “Brace yourself, I trust you remember why,” he teased, and she elbowed him again. “Focus, darling,” he told her. 

It took her a moment, but she was able to shoot with him as close as he was. Her grouping was more than a little off, so he had her try again and again until it wasn’t off. He had her try different types of rifles as they went, so that she could choose the one she was most comfortable with. She was definitely a quick study, which he appreciated. 

After he’d decided that she’d had enough, he sent a text to Maze telling her that Chloe would be ready for her soon. “Chloe, darling, you should get ready for your first lesson with Mazikeen,” he told her. He was so much more amused about this than he had really should be.

He directed her towards the bathroom that they used as a locker room and then Maze walked in. “Where is she?” she asked. 

“Getting ready, hold your horses, Maze,” he chuckled. 

She crossed her arms and scowled at him, "You're happy. You're never happy." A pause where she watched him suspiciously for a long second. "Why are you happy?"

“Happy?” Lucifer asked, brow furrowed. 

“Too smirky,” she glared at him. “Whatever.”

Lucifer shook his head and scoffed. “I’m not ‘smirky’!” he said on a laugh. 

Maze just gave him a look and before he could respond, Chloe came out of the bathroom, dressed in some gym clothes. She was wearing some _very_ tight pants and Lucifer greatly appreciated the view.

Lucifer watched as Chloe adjusted to the experience of Mazikeen Smith. He tried not to let his eyes linger on her curves, but he couldn’t quite help it. And Maze was showing her exactly how it was done. She was being _very_ thorough. She was pressed against the Detective like he had been, and Lucifer had to clench his fists.

Maze put her hand on Chloe’s hip and Lucifer had to swallow against a quiet groan. He’d been with Maze before, sexually, and he’d been with Maze and another person… The thought of the three of them together was beyond tempting, but even thinking about it felt wrong. Not for any other reason than Chloe didn’t seem like the type for that sort of thing. Well, not without a few conversations first. But watching the two of them together, Maze pressed against her, hands trailing along curves, and flirting (Chloe had awkwardly started her usual flirtations, eye rolling and not-quite-witty banter, but it seemed like she had adjusted to Maze and her… Mazeness…), Lucifer had to stop from growling under his breath. A part of him wanted to rip Maze’s hands away from the Detective but he knew that that would be a bit… Well, he was quite used to sharing, loved sharing so much, in fact, that this was very worrying. This… possessive feeling was so unfamiliar that it bothered him. 

The more Maze lingered near Chloe, explaining the technique of throwing a knife accurately and with a lot of force, the more Lucifer wanted to grab Chloe Decker around the waist and pull her to him, to pull her away from Mazikeen. It wouldn’t bother him normally, the thought of Maze managing to seduce someone before him, but this… it was like he didn’t want her near the Detective at all (he had ignored his first instinct of keeping Chloe all to himself, his want for her to be talented had won out on that front). 

He noted the hour and huffed. “Detective, I do hate to break up this little flirtation, but perhaps we’ll pick this up another day?” he asked, brow raised. 

Chloe’s eyes narrowed at him and he gave her a smirk that said he was an absolute scoundrel. Something he knew she would have no trouble believing. She rolled her eyes and Lucifer watched her go, head tilted as she walked away from him. 

“She needs more practice,” Maze told him, a raised brow and a lopsided scowl met his eyes when he turned towards her. 

“She’ll be back, Maze, my dear,” he told her with a sharp grin. “She’s not ready just yet…”

“You were the one that said you never wanted to train anyone,” she said with a shrug. She left the room before he could respond, and he sighed. He’d need her help again so that the Detective would be able to defend herself should she ever be ready to take a job by herself. 

Once Chloe was finished cleaning herself up, he drove her back to their park. The next place they met she wouldn’t be able to spot him so easily. He told her he would be in touch with a smirk as she got out of the car. He watched as she walked away and sighed to himself as he started to drive away. He let his mind wander as he wove through traffic, thinking about how he had never felt possessive before… Well, not possessive, per say, but… territorial was, perhaps a better word. He would never stop her from having sex with Maze, but the thought of it would be tough for him to handle. Well, he thought with a smirk, he would _handle_ something, but the thought of them together without him, even with him there was just… unsettling…

The next few days went by in a haze of excellent cocaine, top shelf whiskey, and willing men and women. He woke up refreshed and ready to pick up the Detective. He was, perhaps, a bit too excited to see her, but he was excited to see if she was still capable of tackling someone. He’d read a report from an arrest file of someone he’d killed once, he remembered because he’d thought that it was an impressive feat, her tackling a three-hundred-pound man. He was smirking as he texted her. 

He wasted as much time as he could waiting for it to be time to pick her up. He hadn’t thought of a new place to meet her quite yet, so the park would have to do. He settled himself in plain sight this time, just excited to teach her hand to hand, and to have Maze show her every purpose of a knife known to man. He watched the entrance and she saw him immediately, and he saw that he had thrown her off by being out in the open. He smirked. She sat next to him and he observed her for a moment. 

“Lucifer,” she greeted, her eyes narrowed with a small smirk on her lips. 

Lucifer tried to keep a reign on the grin he knew was slowly building. The Detective was feeling _playful_ today! “Detective,” he said with a smirk of his own. “I do hope you’re ready, darling.”

“You going to have your… whatever Maze is feel me up again?” she had turned away from him and was watching a woman calling her children to her. 

“Only if you ask her nicely,” he chuckled. “Why, darling, are you interested?” She turned her head toward him sharply and he licked at his bottom lip. “Would you let me watch…” he barely dared to breathe.

Her mouth gaped for the shortest moment and he knew she had heard him. She shook herself and then scoffed. “You wish,” she told him. 

His smirk just grew. “Oh, Detective, how ever did you guess?” he purred with a laugh. 

“Come on, wise guy,” she rolled her eyes at him, but she didn’t stand until he did. She was getting better at reading his body language. 

He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he drove. Her hair was tied back, but there were stray bits flying everywhere as the wind whipped by. She was quiet for once, hadn’t said a word about him keeping to the speed limit this time (she usually did at least once a day if they were in the car for longer than five minutes). He looked over and she had her eyes closed, like she was just enjoying the wind and the sunshine. He had wanted to keep up their teasing banter, but once he saw her like that, her eyes closed, head tilted back to catch the warmth of the sunlight on the air… He couldn’t bring himself to break her out of the moment. He had never felt like that with another person before, the quiet peace that a moment could bring…

He turned away, troubled. He had never had a reaction like that to any other person. He shook it off and by the time they had arrived he had successfully distracted himself from that particular issue. Her hair had been the cause of his distraction, it had been flying wildly and catching the light of the evening sun. He was glad that he could drive every street in the city with a blindfold on in reverse if he had to. 

“Come along, Detective,” he said. She hadn’t moved when he’d turned off the car, but when he spoke she opened her eyes. They met his and held them for what felt like the longest time, but when he blinked she was getting out of the car and the moment had passed (or was never there in the first place, but her eyes… they had… they were the bluest he’d ever seen…). 

She followed him into the building, and they both had to duck the knives that Maze threw at their heads. Or Chloe had to, Lucifer caught the one she threw at him and glared at her. “Good, you brought her back,” Maze smirked. 

“Getting attached, Mazikeen?” he smirked, throwing the knife back to her.

Mazikeen threw it and another knife at him this time along with the one she’d just caught, and he had to duck and weave to avoid a life-threatening injury. Lucifer shook his head and just led the Detective to the room he’d set up for hand to hand combat. 

Lucifer had dressed in a loose pair of sweat pants and a shirt with a light sports jacket. She slipped into the bathroom to change, but he just slipped off his jacket. He considered taking off his shirt but thought that maybe the Detective could help him work up a sweat. It had been so long since he had been challenged in a fight, be it sportsmanlike or otherwise. 

Once she was across from him, he relaxed into a fighting stance. This was something he knew very well; he had been fighting his entire life. He could wait for her to strike but he was much too eager. He gave her a few testing jabs and she avoided them all and then countered one. He let a sharp, predatory smile break out across his face. They were going to have _fun_ together…

She grinned back and teased him with a boxer’s stance before darting at him with a right hook. He leaned out of the way and chuckled. He was ready for whatever she would throw at him, he hoped she was ready for him… He attacked, swift and deadly, and he watched her almost stumble back to get away from him. He didn’t pause, but she quickly gained her footing and ducked under his jab to try and tackle him to the ground. What she managed, was to move him back a few steps and make Lucifer loosen his stance. That was his downfall (literally, because she’d managed to surprise him).

He was staring at the ceiling within the few seconds. Chloe’s head popped into view and she raised a brow at him. “I’ve taken down guys two times bigger than you,” she told him like she thought he hadn’t done his homework. 

“I know about Big Paulo, Detective,” he chuckled as he took her hand. She pulled him up and raised her brows.

“He disappeared like a week after that,” she told him. Her eyes were narrowed, and he had to take a moment to think about what his next plan of attack would be. 

He smirked, giving her the answer she was too afraid to ask for out loud, “Did he? Well, that’s a shame, isn’t it?” And then he lunged at her, catching her in a headlock, which she elbowed him in the stomach to get out of. She was surprisingly scrappy for someone that used to be a police officer. Chloe scoffed at him and rolled her eyes. She muttered something under her breath at him, but he didn’t quite catch it because she threw a punch at him that he barely dodged. “You know, Detective, there are easier ways for us to work up a sweat…” he said, smooth as silk if her little shudder was any indication of what he sounded like. 

“We won’t be here that long,” she said, deadpan. 

Lucifer grinned as she came at him again. He was ready of course. He grabbed her wrist and used her own momentum against her to trip her up and pin her to the mat while never letting go of her wrist. He leaned down so that his mouth was by her ear, smirking as she shivered, “But I _do_ enjoy foreplay, Detective… surely you wouldn’t deprive me of that?” She struggled against his hold, but she couldn’t get away from him. He let her go and gave her a moment to breathe and, apparently, to consider him a little closer than she had been. Perhaps she’d thought that she would be the one to teach him a few things… “What’s the matter, darling?” he smirked.

“Show me how to do that,” she said, surprising him. She’d squared her feet and was staring at him like she expected him to do just that. 

He was about to ask her who she thought was teaching whom, when her eyes caught his again. Electric blue shot through him, took possession of him, and he was moving before he’d even thought about it. He came up behind her, practically wrapped himself around her back, and took ahold of her wrist. His other hand came to rest at her hip, and he used his foot to guide both of hers into place. “Like this,” he said, his voice rougher than it had been, involuntary and unavoidable. He guided her through the motions of the grab a few times, whispering directions when he felt she needed it. Then he stepped away and prepared to attack. He could tell she was getting ready to practice. 

It took her a few tries, but she managed it. Pinning him was a bit more difficult for her but he delighted in the moment that her attempt dissolved into the two of them wrestling each other until they were breathing heavily and practically covered in sweat (neither of them would give up no matter how tired they got and once they had all but exhausted each other, lying in a heap on the mats, did they decide to call it a draw). After that he’d taken off his shirt and had a drink of water, he turned back to Chloe, ready for her to try again. She was staring at him, her brows furrowed and stance loose, almost uncertain. Those eyes of hers were filled with something he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen on anyone’s face, not when applied to him anyway. 

“Detective?” he asked, head tilting. 

Her eyes snapped to his. She’d been staring at his shoulder. “Yeah?” her voice was different, like her mind was somewhere else. 

“Should I put my shirt back on, darling? You seem a bit distracted,” he offered on a chuckle. She was staring at his shoulder again. 

Hers eyes snapped to his again, but this time they focused. “No its… you’re fit- fine! You’re fine!”

“I don’t need you to tell me I’m fit, Detective,” he smirked, and she rolled her eyes getting ready for him to attack. Her eyes were different as he looked at them, much more serious than they had been. 

He attacked and this time he couldn’t quite escape as the she jammed her knee into his kidney and held it there. He had been expecting her to laugh at him at least, but she just stayed there her hand holding his wrist against his back kneeling on him. “Wha… What happened?” she whispered.

“Happened?” he asked, turning his head to try to look at her. 

“To your…” she touched his shoulder and her fingers burned along his skin, “back…” 

Lucifer squirmed under her, testing her hold. “They’re not as attractive as the rest of me, I know, but-”

“Who did this to you?” she cut him off with a whisper.

“I was… tortured. My- my father…” he started.

“Your dad did that to you?” she asked, and he couldn’t quite figure out why her voice sounded so… soft and… 

He pressed his forehead to the mat and tried to throw her off, but she just pressed her knee harder into his back (she was much too focused on her thoughts than on how hard she was pressing her knee into his back). “Well, not exactly, but he didn’t try to pay the ran-” he cut himself off as her fingertips brushed one of the many scars that littered his back, and the memories, the pain he had endured as the people that had kidnapped him from his family had tortured him for days, shot through him. He didn’t know how he got out from under her, but the next thing he knew, he had her pinned with her back to the mat. He was breathing heavily, and she was staring at him in shock. He had a vice grip on one of her wrists and he was straddling her. “Don’t- Please…” he felt like he was begging her. 

“Okay,” she said, her eyes holding him in place for the longest moment before she brought her hand up and brushed it against the hand holding her wrist. 

He scrambled back from her, trying to figure out what had just happened to him and why he was breathing so harshly. She was still staring at him. “I… You should get ready,” he cleared his throat.

Chloe blinked and he sighed in relief, that look was gone. “Ready?” she asked. 

“For Maze, darling,” he purred with a laugh. “She’ll want you to be at your best. I’ll trust you remember where she likes to spend her time…” He got up and headed towards the door.

Chloe rolled her eyes, but she got up and made her way to the bathroom. Lucifer fled to another bathroom and slipped into the extra clothes he’d brought with him (dark jeans, a white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket). He was still a little shaken but a break from that haunting gaze of hers would do to balance him out. He got to the training room before Chloe did, but Maze was sharpening a knife when he walked in. She was staring at him with an almost savage frown as she kept sharpening and Lucifer had almost had enough of it when she spoke. “You better be careful, Lucifer,” she told him. 

He scoffed, “Careful?! Maze, you know better than anyone that I am _always_ careful.”

“I’m not the one that just mentioned something personal to my trainee,” she said folding her arms. “If she’s not on the level, you just put yourself at risk.”

Lucifer crowded her with a growl, stalking forwards until they were nose to nose. Maze had never been afraid of much, but he was still the man that taught her everything she knew. She wouldn’t back down, he knew that from experience, but she still knew that he could beat her in a fight. “You’re the one putting yourself at risk, Mazikeen,” he bit out, “challenging me…”

She scoffed at him, “Yeah, whatever.”

He growled at her, but before he could start anything, Chloe walked into the room. She looked between the two of them and then shifted awkwardly on her feet. “There you are, darling,” he smiled sharply, but the one she offered him back lacked its usual sarcastic edge. “Maze is _absolutely_ thrilled that you're back, you know…”

Chloe rolled her eyes but let him nudge her in Maze’s direction as he passed her. He set up a chair for himself and watched as Maze made her stretch (and touched her whenever she could, like Lucifer wanted to, like his hands burned to). He let his eyes linger on the lines of her body. She and Mazikeen made quite the picture, as they had the last time. Chloe’s grip on the knife looked natural when she took it in her hand. 

Maze flipped the knife in her hand casually as she turned away, and he watched as Chloe tried to copy the movement. The knife would have clattered to the floor if she hadn’t scrambled for it. She caught it between her arm and her side and looked around the room to make sure that no one had seen. But he had. She flushed deeply when her eyes met his, and he chuckled but his eyes were dark. Her face went slack and she swallowed visibly. His grin grew, predatory and full of want. 

Once Maze turned back to her, Chloe snapped to attention ready to learn. Maze had her demonstrate what she remembered from their last lesson. She only had trouble when it came to throwing it hard enough, and only once, though her aim was a little off. He was made to endure Mazikeen’s hands all over his Detective again, and he sighed. They made such a tempting picture as Maze came up behind her (Chloe glanced at him and he gave her a wink and a smirk before she looked away). They were pressed together, no space between them and Lucifer growled low enough that neither of them could hear. 

Chloe was so intent on Maze’s lesson, and Lucifer wanted to know if she would let him as close as she was letting Maze (if his hands would burn against her skin like hers had on his back, if she would let him devour her like he wanted to so very badly). If she would let his hands dance along the skin showing as her shirt rode up, or if she would jump at his touch like she had on the day of their first lesson. He knew that he had to get her into the shooting range again. And he would have to teach her the fine art of torturing someone, but a few more jobs and she would be ready to try that on her own. A person like him, with a job like his, had to be prepared to kill anyone any number of different ways. He’d give her some weight lifting exercises to help her gain and maintain the strength needed to break someone’s neck or any bone that might need to be broken.

Maze was showing Chloe how to block a low thrust to the gut, and Lucifer paused in his thoughts. She was beautiful, yes, and tempting beyond anything he’d ever encountered, but today… when she’d… She wasn’t supposed to… She was dangerous in a way he hadn’t been prepared for. She had… somehow she had got under his skin and he was determined not to let it happen again. 

If only he knew how it had happened to begin with…


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn't until their fifth job together that things went wrong.

"Jump!" Lucifer yelled from the rooftop of the building across the alley, waving his arm at her to hurry up.

But Chloe looked down at the street—ten stories below—and the gap between the buildings—far too wide for someone of her stature to easily clear—and she couldn't do it. The banging from the roof access door behind her was almost lost in the wind that whipped her ponytail around, but it wouldn't be long before the cops broke through and she-

She just. Couldn't. Do it.

It was supposed to be an easy job. Lucifer handed all of the planning over to her, like a test. And she had gone through every eventuality and planned the hit down to the finest detail. She'd run surveillance, Lucifer in the passenger seat. She'd picked the perfect day—their target was always home on Wednesday afternoons and never had company—and the simplest location: his apartment. There was no point luring him out when the cleanup crew could come in with the neighbor's housekeeping almost as soon as they were done.

She'd go in through the balcony doors, leaving Lucifer outside, just long enough to shoot the target and get out again. Then they'd leave, the cleanup crew would come in, and another successful hit would be under her belt.

It was supposed to be _easy_.

"Detective!" Lucifer called sharply. "It's now or never. _Jump_."

The sound of a drill rose over the wind, and she glanced back to the access door. They were either taking off the hinges or drilling out the lock. Either way, it was down to seconds before they came through. God, she was going to lose everything. She was going to get the chair and Trixie would be stuck with Dan and-

"Just go," she yelled back, her shoulders slumping as she turned back toward the door to face her fate head on.

Everything had gone fine at first. The apartment above him was empty, and they dropped from that balcony onto the target's. There was no one else in his apartment, and she could see him from the balcony, sitting at the breakfast bar, back to her. She jimmied the lock on the balcony door and slipped through, gun at the ready. He was eating soup and reading a thick book, completely oblivious to the fact that he was about to die.

He didn't even look up as she crept up behind him, and right as she took the shot, the apartment door opened and in came his brother—a cop—and two friends, all of them yelling "Surprise!" and carrying booze.

She froze. They froze. The target's blood oozed from his forehead onto the counter and dripped slowly off the edge.

The brother was a cop. She hadn't looked into him much beyond making sure he hadn't been seen visiting any time recently and wouldn't be there when she was carrying out the hit. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine the people with him were cops, too, and they were there for- _Why were they there_?

Then Lucifer's hand was on her shoulder and he was dragging her back toward the balcony. She shook off her paralysis and—with a boost from him—managed to get her fingers over the edge of the balcony above them and pull herself up. All of the working out he made her do was coming in handy, finally. She turned to help him up too, but he was already pulling himself up behind her.

"_Go_," he growled as he pushed past her. She hurried to catch up, idly noting that her hands were shaking so bad she wouldn’t be able to aim her gun.

He peered through the peephole before opening the door and slipping through. She followed, all the way down the hall and into the stairwell. It felt like they were almost home-free. They just needed to get down to the ground floor, take a couple back alleys to Lucifer's car, and-

"There!" came a yell from the flight of stairs below them. The brother had clearly had the same thought as them and was already in the stairwell. And she could hear sirens whooping down the street, getting closer.

Lucifer just turned and took the stairs two at a time, heading up. She followed, running double-time, and was panting by the time they made it the four flights up to the roof. She looked around wildly, hoping to find something, _anything_, that would help them while Lucifer locked the door from the outside. She hadn't prepared for this situation. She had gotten cocky and hadn't prepared for getting _caught_.

She could hear him muttering something from across the alley but the words themselves were lost. Then there was a thump next to her and Lucifer was there, grabbing her upper arm.

"You can still get-" she started to protest even as she moved with him.

"I've put too much effort into you to let you get captured by such poor examples of LA's finest," he said, and then turned them. He slid his hand down her arm and grabbed her hand in a tight grip, their fingers interlocking. "Let's go."

She shouldn't trust him with her life, but she did. And if he thought she could make it across that yawning space, she could believe him. They ran, her legs pumping and breath coming hard, Lucifer hardly breaking a sweat. Then she was on the edge. Shouting came from behind them, but she didn't look back. She just jumped.

She landed hard, going to her knees and skidding across the dirty gravel on the rooftop. Lucifer didn't give her a chance to catch her bearings, just dragged her to her feet saying, "Once more, Detective," and they were off again.

The next building was lower, and the gap was much smaller than the first one had been. She could have jumped that on her own but didn't let go of his hand. The added reassurance—the certain knowledge that he would make sure she didn't fall—was calming the nauseous roll of her stomach, morphing the rabbit-fast beating of her heart from panic to exertion.

She didn't quite stick the landing, and Lucifer's grip on her hand had her stumbling into him. He caught her, his hands going to her upper arms, her hands landing on his chest. It was heaving, the exertion finally getting to him. When she looked up and met his eyes, they were dark, endless pools that she could imagine herself falling into. They held her, trapped her, but she didn't want to escape.

Then he was clearing his throat and giving a perfunctory pat to her arms before stepping back. She blinked and dropped her arms. That was… such a bad idea. And just the heat of the moment. Adrenaline from their near-miss—that wasn't quite over yet—not… Not anything else. He was attractive, she could see that, and yeah, he was probably a decent lay, but she didn't want-

"We need to get off this roof," he said, and she followed him mutely to the access door at a quick jog.

Travel back to the car was uneventful. The cops on the roof must not have seen them jump to the third building, and the cruisers on the road were parked around their target's building. They turned in the opposite direction and moved purposefully to where the car was.

"Congratulations-" Lucifer said dryly as he put the car in gear and pulled out of the alley, "-on your first ruined hit."

She took a moment to digest that. He didn't sound upset, and as much as she wanted to take all of the blame for this going wrong, she wasn't sure she could. And he wasn't one to sugarcoat things when she did something wrong.

So she smiled through her worry, a crooked half-smile, and said, "He's dead, isn't he? Surely that counts as successful."

Lucifer barked a surprised laugh and grinned at her. "Quite right."

"What did I do wrong?" she couldn't stop herself from asking. She needed the reassurance that this was bad luck and not her fault. That she didn't need to go back to playing a less active role in the preparations because she was-

"Nothing," Lucifer said, casting a surprised look her way. "I wouldn't have let you go in knowing you'd missed something, you know. I told you: I've put far too much effort into training you to let you get caught this early."

"Oh, is that the only reason," she teased, settling back for the ride to their meeting place in LA.

Lucifer flicked on his turn signal before answering, eyes cutting to her and back to the road as he went up the ramp to the highway. "I suppose you're not altogether unpleasant, for former police."

She felt giddy with adrenaline still, so she laughed and patted his arm, ignoring how he froze under her touch. "Thanks. And you're not too bad for a playboy hitman yourself."

He was silent for a long moment, long enough for some of the adrenaline to fade and for her to start regretting opening her mouth.

Then, at a stoplight, he said, staring straight out the windshield, "Perhaps you shouldn't come along for my next job."

"What?" she asked, whipping her head around to stare at him. She knew hurt was coloring her features and her voice, but she couldn't help it. "You just said-"

He grimaced and interrupted her, still staring out the windshield. "Not because of that. It's for the Sinnerman. You shouldn't get mixed up in his business."

"For the-" she started, but the words got caught in her throat and she was left opening and closing her mouth like a dead-eyed fish.

The Sinnerman was a legend used to spook rookies. A criminal mastermind, too slippery to catch, too wily to find, too dangerous to bring in. And, most importantly, _not real_. There was no vast criminal empire that spanned the continent and definitely not one kingpin on top of it all, running it like a very dangerous corporation. There were stories, of course, but there were ghost stories about haunted hotels too. Just because there were multiple accounts didn't make something true. Eyewitnesses were notoriously unreliable.

Being sent to find the Sinnerman's case file in the back had been her original precinct's version of a snipe hunt. He just didn't-

"He doesn't exist," she finally said.

Lucifer blinked, finally turning to look at her, his brow crinkled a little in confusion. "Surely you've heard-"

"Stories. Tall tales," she said. "There's no ghosts at the Biltmore and there's no Sinnerman running a criminal empire."

"I can assure you, Detective, there very much is." Lucifer drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel, occasionally glancing at her like he was evaluating how much to tell her.

"I can handle whatever it is you don't want to tell me," she finally said. She blew out a frustrated breath before tucking a wisp of loose hair back behind her ear. "I'm not as delicate as you seem to think I am sometimes."

"Mm," Lucifer hummed in acknowledgment, still not telling her anything.

"Look," she said, turning toward him and trying to catch his eye. She wasn't successful, but she continued on. "You know I'm going to go to the office tomorrow morning and start looking for more info—more _true_ info—on this guy. Do you really want me doing that?"

"You shouldn't," he said, his voice hard and a tic in his jaw. "It will only bring trouble."

"Well what else am I supposed to do?" She took a chance, reaching out to put a hand on his arm and squeezing gently. His muscles were rock hard underneath her touch. "If he's running half as much as we tell—told—the rookies, then I'm going to be hired by him sooner or later."

He glanced down at her hand, a complicated look in his eyes that she couldn't begin to decipher, so she dropped her hand, only a little regretfully. She thought that was going to be it; he wasn't going to give her more information or let her go along on the hit. Then he started to talk.

"If I let you accompany me, I want your word you won't go digging into him. He's the second most dangerous man I know, Detective, and you don't want to be noticed by him if you can help it."

"Who's the first?" she asked, curious, but he waved away her question.

"Not important. You'll never meet him."

She opened her mouth to ask how she was supposed to avoid him if she didn't know who she as avoiding, but he kept going.

"Your word, Detective. That you won't investigate."

She thought about it for a minute. There wasn't a good reason to look into the Sinnerman besides her curiosity, and she supposed she could sate that by questioning Lucifer further later on. Like before the hit.

"Fine," she said, settling back against the seat. "Scout's honor."

He looked amused at that and said, "There won't be much for you to do. I'll only be double-checking the information I've been provided and then carrying out a rather boring job."

She knew by now that what he meant when he said "boring" was a straight kill, no message to send. She was maybe a little disappointed—there was something captivating about watching him in his element—but that was all the more reason for her to go. She preferred the boring hits.

"Although," he continued as they reached the park and he pulled over into the bike lane so she could get out, "I suppose you could use more practice getting past security systems. Three weeks from today, half seven. Don't be late."

She grinned at him then slipped out of the car. She didn't stop to watch him drive away, but it was a near thing. She needed to get home and relieve the babysitter.

The Sinnerman. God, how could he be real? She had been hearing about him since before she went through the Academy. She was pretty certain her dad had joked about him, too. He would have to be… much older than her by now. Unless it was a Dread Pirate Roberts sort of situation.

Was that even possible?

Trixie was in bed when she got home, and the babysitter left quickly. Chloe dropped down on the couch and flicked on the news, just to see if there was any mention of the murder. She flipped through a handful of channels, finally finding a quick segment on it. It didn't look like they were going to get caught, and she couldn't imagine Lucifer would let them get caught if it came down to that, but it was reassuring to see that for herself.

She couldn't pull her mind away from the Sinnerman. She wouldn't go looking for him—she had given Lucifer her word, after all—but the curiosity might eat her alive. She wondered if her dad had ever looked into him, if there were dirty cops that worked for him—which, of course there were—and that was why Judge Mackenzie had been the one to oversee the murder trial.

That was a spiral she couldn't afford to go down. And she definitely couldn't afford to start looking up her dad's name paired with "the Sinnerman" to see if there was any connection. She had no reason to believe there was. It was just idle curiosity.

Just idle curiosity.

* * *

It was hard to get Trixie out of bed the next morning. She was dragging her feet and complaining of a stomachache, but she didn't have a fever and Chloe had been slacking at her daytime job lately. If she didn't get those pictures of the guy and his mistress by today, Hamond was going to have her head. And while she wasn't hurting for money anymore, not the way she had been before, she still needed her day job. It wasn't great for laundering her split of the money from the jobs, but it was better than nothing.

So Trixie had to go to school, and she had to actually work today. Doing the research on their last job, wanting to get everything perfect, had taken up too much of her time; she'd already missed two meetings between the guy and his mistress, one for a stakeout with Lucifer, one just because she lost track of time while she was researching the target's past misdeeds.

Trixie was poking at the egg in front of her but not eating it, and Chloe had to face the idea that maybe she really was sick. Perfect. She felt her forehead again, still no temp.

"Mommy, where do you go at night?" Trixie asked, prodding at the egg with her fork. Her voice was quiet, and Chloe was stricken, both by how sad she sounded and how she hadn't prepared for this moment and come up with a suitable lie.

"Uh," she said.

Trixie prodded at the egg some more, still not looking at Chloe. "Sometimes I wake up and you're gone."

"I'm just at work, monkey," Chloe finally choked out. Christ. Sure, she'd been leaving Trixie with a babysitter more often when she slept, but she hadn't realized it was _that_ often. She wasn't any better than Dan, was she? She'd have to call Lucifer and-

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Trixie asked suddenly, dropping her fork with a clatter and looking up at Chloe with a frown on her little face.

Oh no. Were they going to have to have another talk about how she and Dan were never getting back together? She thought she'd nipped that in the bud in the first few months of the separation, never mind now that they'd been divorced for so long. "Nope, I'm just working. But your daddy and I-"

Trixie didn't wait to hear the rest of what she had to say, instead interrupting with, "Do you love him better than me?"

Her eyes were filling with tears and Chloe felt like the worst mother on Earth.

She quickly dropped down beside Trixie's chair so she was a little below her, as close to on level as she could get. "Oh baby, no, I don't have a boyfriend and even if I did I would never love him more than I love you. I love you to Mars and back."

Trixie started crying and reached for her. Chloe was quick to pull her into her arms, whispering reassurances into her hair. A few tears leaked from her eyes, but she held back most of them. How could she have not noticed this? She should've known she was leaving Trixie with a babysitter too often and done something about it. She was going to have to tell Lucifer that she couldn't do as many jobs, not if they made her little monkey feel like this.

Christ. She'd been so wrapped up in the… the joy of learning that she'd neglected her own kid. She'd done to Trixie what her own mother had done to her. Only instead of going on auditions and filming movies, she was killing people. How the hell could she have done that to her own daughter when she _knew_ how it felt?

"Hey, monkey," she said softly as Trixie's tears slowed. "How about we both play hooky today and have a girl's day instead?"

"Can I paint your nails?" Trixie asked, sniffling, her voice thick with tears.

Chloe laughed a little and pulled back, getting to her feet and holding out her hand. "You can do my hair, too," she offered, knowing it was going to end up as a rat's nest and not caring. It would be worth it if it got Trixie to smile.

"Okay," Trixie said, still sniffling, but looking happier.

"Why don't you go wash up and blow your nose while I call the school and work, okay? And then get some nail polish out of your room."

Trixie nodded and ran off to the bathroom. Once Chloe heard the water in the sink turn on, she grabbed her cell and called the school first. It was easy enough to tell them Trixie had an upset stomach and wouldn't be coming in today. Calling work, though, was another thing entirely.

"I can't get the pics today, Hamond," she said after the barest of pleasantries "My kid's sick. It'll have to wait until next week."

The line was silent for a moment, then Hamond sighed as though she had asked for something incredibly unreasonable, like a raise. His voice was hard as he said, "You know Decker, I've given you a lot of leeway here, what with you being a cop and all. But I can't keep cutting you break after break. Either get the pictures or don't come in to work tomorrow."

He hung up before she could respond.

Which was probably a good thing because if she _had_ been able to respond, she would have been fired anyway. If she didn't need some fucking plausible employment, a backup gig if hits dried up, somewhere to launder money through, she would've quit. She really would've. A lot of leeway? Please, she was ten times the investigator he was. She was ten times the investigator he was even when she was half-assing her job. And cutting her _breaks_?

For a single instant, she wondered if she could hire herself for a hit. It would be so satisfying…

But she couldn't. She was pretty sure it was against hitman rules to kill someone that could be connected back to your daily life.

How was she going to get those pictures? She knew where the restaurant they'd be meeting at was, sure. And it was nice out, so they'd probably choose to eat outside, but- She pulled up a map of the surrounding area. There were no parks around where she could send Trixie to play. And she wasn't going to leave her with a babysitter again. No way.

"Hey Trix," she said as Trixie reappeared with some garish neon nail polish, "do you want to go on a stakeout later?"

Trixie's eyes lit up and she shrieked a "yes!" She hadn't let go of her President of Mars phase quite yet, but Chloe could see the "private detective" phase coming on in the future. She went to grab the plastic tablecloth they used to cover the table when doing messy crafts. They would have just enough time to paint their nails and clean up before they had to leave for the stakeout. She just hoped Trixie would still be as enthusiastic after an hour in the car with only whatever entertainment they could grab on the way out.

* * *

Chloe still hadn't figured out how to bring up that she needed to cut back by the time she was to meet Lucifer again. She promised Trixie she'd be back before midnight and really, really hoped she could keep that promise. She spent the entire ride to the target's house fretting over it, biting her lip and staring out the passenger-side window.

She could feel Lucifer glancing over at her and knew that he was looking at her with worry in his eyes. She could just imagine what he was thinking, what he suspected she was worried about. If he thought she'd betrayed him somehow.

"Detective…" he said right before they reached their destination, but she didn't think she could find the right words before they were there, and they were on a schedule. Boring hit it may be, but everything still had to run smoothly.

She turned to him and touched his arm lightly. "After."

He gave her one last troubled glance and then they were there.

It was a trickier alarm system to get past. She couldn't just cut the power to it, and they hadn't gotten the code. Probably, knowing Lucifer, that was on purpose to test her skills. And that was okay. After the last job, she felt like all of her skills needed testing again before she could really claim to be ready. As much as she was starting to chafe under Lucifer's watchful eye—and she was, just a little—she didn't feel ready to cut the apron strings.

She'd studied the security system in the weeks before they'd met up again and had a pretty good idea of how to disable it. She had thirty seconds between opening the door and the alarm going off, and her fingers were sweaty as she jimmied the lock to get inside and then popped off the cover of the control unit. There were two little screws she needed to undo, and then she had fifteen seconds to connect those two wires there with that other wire and then-

The LCD panel flashed once. Disabled just as if they'd entered the correct code.

She glanced back at Lucifer with a grin, only to find him watching her with a troubled look on his face.

_What?_ she mouthed, but he just shook his head at her and motioned for her to follow him deeper into the house. She could hear the target singing somewhere deeper in.

It was hot in the house, the temperature above anything she would consider comfortable. The target was ill, she knew that, but hadn't looked closely at what it was. It didn't matter; what mattered was that she couldn't afford to be dripping sweat and leaving evidence they were there. Lucifer had rolled up his sleeves, and she did the same, hoping it would help. And it did, some.

The target was in the office, a thin old man who was surely going to die soon anyway. Why he needed to die _now_, she didn't know. Lucifer hadn't told her—if he’d even got a reason in the first place—and with his last reaction when she expressed interest in the Sinnerman, it was probably better not to ask. Within seconds, Lucifer had stepped up behind the chair the target was in, and the garrote went around his neck with such a deft motion she was almost jealous. She was pretty sure she'd never look that elegant while murdering someone.

The muscles in Lucifer's forearms bulged as the target strained against the chair. He scrabbled at the garrote, his face slowly going redder and redder, and when that didn't work, tried to grab Lucifer's arm, his hand flapping weakly behind him. Lucifer calmly shifted out of the way without letting up on the pressure.

She found herself oddly fascinated by the play of muscle under Lucifer's skin. She wasn't into beefy guys with chiseled abs, but Lucifer's lean muscle, the way he moved… If she met him in a club or at a bar, she wouldn't think twice about flirting with him. Back before she had Trixie, before she knew Dan, she would've gone home with him, too. She wouldn't've wanted more than a night then, even if he had been interested in that sort thing, but now… If he hadn't been a hitman, she might-

"Detective," Lucifer hissed sharply, and she came back to herself with a snap and a brief feeling of unreality. The target was dead, and Lucifer was ready to go. And she had been standing there like an idiot, staring at his forearms. He turned a leer on her, but it was half-hearted at best and he added, in a much calmer undertone, "Now is not the time, darling, but if you want, I'm free later. We could-"

"In your dreams," she said and pushed past him to exit the study. Her hands were trembling a little, and she really hoped he didn't notice.

Something had shifted between them. How could it not after she saw those scars? It looked like someone had flayed skin off his back, and torture? What did that even mean? What sort of father would let that happen to their child, no matter how old the child was? She'd had so many questions at the time and swallowed them all. She thought she'd swallowed them for good, and now was definitely an awkward time to have them crowding at her throat.

She wanted to know more about him, and the realization was so startling she stumbled on the way to the car, tripping over nothing. Lucifer grabbed her arm and hurried her along, seeing her into the passenger seat safely before sliding into the driver's seat himself and pulling out. God, she was a mess. She could not be having feelings for her hitman mentor. That was unacceptable. It was a good thing she was going to see less of him. In fact, now was the perfect time to-

"We need to talk," she said abruptly.

Lucifer's only reaction was a subtle tightening of his fingers on the wheel. His face didn't go blank, the rest of him didn't tense up, but she saw those fingers tighten and she wondered what he thought she was going to say. Nothing good, certainly. And, she supposed, he was right in that.

"If you're about to tell me you're deep undercover and about to bust me," he started, and she wasn't sure if the humor in his voice was forced or not, but she interrupted anyway.

"Definitely not," she said. She bit her lip, then turned in the seat so she could look at him. "I need to take a step back."

His face went carefully blank at that and she just couldn't piece together why. Then he said, "Ah. Regretting turning to this life already?"

So he was upset over having wasted time training her. She supposed she would be too, if that were what was actually happening.

"God, no," she said. She reached for his forearm and squeezed gently before dropping her hand back to her lap. "Don't worry, you haven't wasted time teaching me all of this. And I'm so grateful. I just mean I need to cut back on how many jobs I go on. My daughter, Trixie-"

His head snapped toward her and the look on his face had her shrinking back in her seat a little. He looked almost feral as he growled, "_Never_ tell anyone about your family. Never. You can't even trust me. This life isn't-"

"Whoa," she said, sitting back up and holding up a hand to stop him. "Watch the road."

He turned his head back to the road, but his fingers were flexing on the steering wheel and there was a tic in his jaw. His entire body had tightened up and she wondered what it was about her family that had him so suddenly out of sorts.

"You had to've known I had a daughter," she said after a moment of collecting her thoughts. "Didn't you look into me?"

He gave the windshield a disgusted look. "Of course I researched you. I'm not a bloody fool. But I didn't need to know about your immediate family, so I didn't look into that."

She sat silently to digest that. She supposed it was true; her immediate family would have little bearing on her work beyond, she supposed, a way to get to her. It made sense not to tell people about Trixie, about who her mom was, about Dan. But Lucifer?

"I trust you," she said quietly. "You-"

"_Don't_," he snarled.

"Well too fucking late for that," she said, starting to get peeved. What was the big deal about trusting one person, a person who held the key to ruining her life in his hands at all times? "You've never lied to me about this life, you've saved my ass from the cops, and you're-"

She cut herself off before she could say anything about how nice he was when he wasn't trying to be a big bad hitman, when he wasn't flirting with her to throw her off balance. She wasn't sure she wanted him to know that, not with how this conversation was going.

"Trusting anyone in this business is a mistake," he said. "Including me. You think I wouldn't trade you in an instant for my own safety? You think I would, what? I'd give you up every time if I-"

"You came back for me," she snapped. "You could've left me to the cops, and instead you came back and helped me jump that alley."

"Completely different," he dismissed with a wave of his hand. "If you had refused again I was going to leave you there."

She didn't believe that. But he was continuing before she could object.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about your future training," he said. His fingers were flexing on the steering wheel again, and the tic that had calmed somewhat was back in his jaw. "I think you're proficient enough to start doing your own hits. You no longer need to be watched over."

"Wh-" she started, his words like a punch to the gut.

"I'll put you in contact with Maze for now to act as a middleman. Once you gain some notoriety in the business, she'll be able to put you in contact with more. I see no reason why you won't be successful at this point."

"I-" she tried again, words clawing at her throat but getting stuck somewhere behind her tongue, feeling like they were choking her. She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't anywhere near ready for this. But he-

"You've learned all I have to teach you," he said. "You're free to fly or fall on your own."

She wasn't sure what was filling her faster, anger at the thought that this was a snit brought on by their conversation or hurt at the way he was tossing her aside so casually. Either way, she would be better off being rid of him. Maybe he was right, and she shouldn't've trusted him.

"Fine," she finally spat out. "I was getting tired of waiting to be rid of you. The money will be better without having to split it with you."

"Fine," he said. "I'm glad we agree."

An uncomfortable silence filled the car. It was a long ride back to LA.

* * *

She had, maybe, made a mistake.

The hole Lucifer left in her life was a strange shape. She had seen him maybe once a week at the most, usually a lot less, over the course of eight months. This past month of not hearing from him at all…

They'd gone through multiple burners over the course of the eight months, and she doubted he was still using the last one she had a number for. She hadn't even tried to call or text. She didn't want to know if she was right. She could pretend that she still had access to him if necessary. She could pretend they hadn't ruthlessly cut each other out of their lives.

She _missed_ him, which felt weird. It had been a long time since she had someone to miss, and she resented, just the tiniest bit, that the streak had been broken. She had been doing fine before she sought him out. She shouldn't have gotten comfortable. She shouldn't have started thinking of him as a friend. She should've known better.

If she had just not said anything about trusting him…

No, fuck him. They hadn't been anything close to friends. The flirtation had just been to tease her. The quiet moments hadn't meant anything. She hadn't made a mistake; she didn't need him.

She finished counting pushups and switched to crunches, pausing only briefly to wipe sweat out of her eyes. It was another hour before she had to pick up Trixie from school. After finishing all of the investigative work she could for the day she had been at loose ends, with nothing better to do than dwell on the mistakes she had made with Lucifer. The exercise was supposed to distract her.

It wasn't working.

Her burner rang and she froze, flat on the floor. Then she leapt to her feet and rushed over to grab it out of her bag. She counted to three before answering, slowing her breathing and scrubbing an arm across her forehead to get some of the sweat off.

"Hello?"

"I've got a job for you, Decker."

Maze. Lucifer had said he'd put Chloe in contact with her. Chloe had wondered if he was going to hold up his end of the deal, given how things ended. She shouldn't have been surprised that he had.

"Lucifer said you'd like this one."

"How is he?" she asked, instantly regretting it.

But Maze just made a disgusted sound and said, "Ugh, not you too. I'll send you the details."

Then she hung up.

What did that mean, "not you too"? She couldn't help but dwell on it as she pulled out the laptop Lucifer's tech guy had set up for her and opened up an encrypted connection. Was he okay? Was something wrong? Was he as unsettled as she was by suddenly having no contact with each other? She opened up the encrypted email and there was Maze's message. She opened up the first attachment and stared at the name.

Chad Groner.

Chad Groner, celebrity venture capitalist, serial rapist, and acquitted nine months ago on all charges.

The only other data in the file was an address. The second attachment was an image, a corporate headshot. He looked just as much like a frat boy as she remembered from the news articles. She was going to enjoy this.

She called Maze back. "Any requests?"

"Make it clean," she said, and Chloe had to bite back a sigh of disappointment. Sure, she preferred clean hits, but just this one time she could understand how Lucifer got so much pleasure from punishing before he killed.

"Anything else?"

"Can you get it done in a week?"

She thought about it for a minute. She was working one case right now that was mostly tracking finances. There were no school events coming up. Her week was as open as it could be. She could probably cut it down to two days of surveillance, if she planted bugs today and carried out the hit after he went to bed. It would-

"Yeah," she said. "A week is fine."

"Good," Maze said and hung up again.

Chloe stared at the phone for a moment, half wishing it had been Lucifer to call her even knowing that wasn't his job, and then shook her head and put it back in her bag. She needed to get to work.

* * *

Groner had a Tesla. Of course he did. He also had a mansion with a gated driveway but lackadaisical security. Nothing she couldn't hack into, though. She still had the fancy gadgets Lucifer had lent her, one of which was designed specifically for breaking into security systems like his. Connect the wires to the box, wait anywhere between ten seconds and five minutes, and the code would flash on the little screen and the system would be turned off.

It was incredibly useful for the systems used by corporations and multi-millionaires.

She packed a few other things she might need into a bag and holstered her gun. It was two hours to Groner's, two hours to make sure he was at the office he sometimes worked from and plant the bugs, two hours back. She could probably make it back just before Trixie got home from school. Perfect. She slipped on a pair of coveralls—nothing like looking like a maintenance worker to make people dismiss your presence entirely—and headed out.

Traffic to San Diego was as light as it ever was, and she made it to the office building in just under two hours. She parked in a garage down the street and made it to the garage his Tesla was parked in without any trouble. With a ballcap pulled low over her face, she got in and found the electric vehicle charging stations easy enough. It was a matter of seconds to drop the work bag she was carrying, bend to pick it up and slap a GPS tracker to the underside of the carriage, and head out again. Two days wasn't a lot of time to track his schedule—she would prefer weeks, if she had a choice—but it would have to do.

She got back to her car and started the trek to his mansion, just outside the city.

It was big, and set back from the road, but she could only see one camera pointed toward the gate and one by the call box. There wasn't a guardhouse anywhere that she could see, so presumably there was no one watching the feeds. She stood just outside the first camera and picked up a rock. Hopefully Maze's knife-throwing training would come in handy now. She chucked the rock as hard as she could toward the lens of the camera. It hit home, shattering it and she suppressed a cheer. That was one down.

For the camera on the call box, she took a gamble that no one was watching. If someone was and came out, or she heard the cops, well. She had been running every morning for the past nine months and was pretty fast for short sprints. She could get away and circle back to her car where it was parked a few blocks away in what looked like a camera blind spot, between two other houses.

She readjusted her ballcap so her face was in shadow and got to work, quickly popping the faceplate off the box and wiring her code breaker into its innards. The screen started to flash as text scrolled across it. She checked the street in both directions, and there was no one coming, but she still hoped it would be quick and not one of those nerve wracking times where it took what felt like forever.

Just when she was starting to get nervous, the code for the gate flashed on the screen and it started to open. She disconnected the wires, put the codebreaker back in her work bag, and carefully slipped inside while keeping an eye out for security cameras. There was a button she assumed closed the gate, on a box on a pole where a driver could reach it easily. She hit it, and the gate started to close behind her.

She had to dodge three cameras on the way up, cutting across the perfectly manicured lawn. There had to be security on the entrances to the mansion itself, likely with cameras, so she couldn't go in through a window and the front door was too risky. She circled the building, hoping there was a servants' entrance somewhere.

Bingo. There was a locked door on the side of the house. As she was pulling out her set of lock picks, something had her stopping, goosebumps rising on her arms. There was an itch between her shoulder blades, like someone was watching her.

She turned slowly in place, scanning her surroundings for anything out of place. But everything looked fine, quiet and still. There wasn't anyone out there. She was sure of it, but that didn't help her shake the feeling that someone was watching.

"Get it together," she muttered, turning back to the lock.

It wasn't an uncommon feeling while she was doing this. Usually it was Lucifer, watching her work. Now that he was done with her—the thought had her flinching away from the pain that accompanied it—it wasn't like he'd be watching. It had to be just her nerves. And, once she slid open the door and slipped through, it dissipated as she crept through the house and planted the occasional bug. She'd have to collect them again after she killed Groner, so she made sure to keep track of where they were going.

It didn't take long to finish, and soon she was out of the house, through the gate, and strolling down the sidewalk back to her car. She was almost there when the itch between her shoulder blades started up again. It was tempting to look back and try to catch someone following her. If it were Lucifer, she was sure he would duck into an alleyway and drag the person in when they walked past. But she wasn't Lucifer, and no matter how much Maze had worked with her, she didn't have the confidence that she could pull off a strike like that.

So she passed her car by and kept walking. She wasn't familiar with the area, but she thought she had driven past a side street a mile or so back. She could turn down there and wait to see if someone was following. When she got there, there wasn't anywhere she could hide and wait. And when she finally looked back, there was no one on the street behind her. She suddenly felt very silly. It was the middle of the workday. Who was going to be watching a person in coveralls—a person who looked like a maintenance worker—walking down the street? Even in a neighborhood like this?

No one, that was who. She was just nervous because it was her first solo job. But she had been careful, and done everything right, and there was no one following her. So she turned and went back to her car, sliding in and pulling out before she could over-think it any more.

She reached home just in time to collect Trixie from the bus. There was no need to listen to the bugs when Groner wasn't home, so she kept half an eye on the tracker connected to her burner all through helping with homework and making dinner. She was just beginning to think she'd fucked up placing it somehow when it started to move.

It would take him about forty-five minutes to get home, even though rush hour was over. That was long enough to get Trixie fed and put on a movie so she was entertained and Chloe could listen to the bugs in the house. She wished she'd been able to clone his cell, but she wasn't sure where to get the technology to do that. All of the really cool toys had been Lucifer's.

Well fuck him for leaving her in this position. Maybe she could get the information from Maze.

While Trixie watched _Finding Dory_, Chloe sat on the couch, headphones connected to her phone, one earbud in so she could listen to the active bugs. It was incredibly boring. Groner made a few business calls—nothing she needed to know about in them—and then put on ESPN, or something that sounded a lot like it. He seemed to be settling in for the night, getting ready for bed before Trixie even.

For a while, all she could hear was the sound of sheets shifting from the bug she'd put in the bedroom lamp. Then, as she was telling Trixie it was time to go to bed, even that stopped. It was barely 8pm. If this guy got up at four or five in the morning, she was going to be very displeased. That was far too early for anyone sane to be awake. She'd have to get up and check.

The rest of the night was quiet, both from the bugs and in her life. She tried to watch TV, tried to read a book, tried to distract herself from the fact that she missed a man she barely knew anything about more than was reasonable. But he had been… kind to her, and underneath all of his flirting and wicked sense of humor seemed to be a good person. As good as anyone could be when their chosen profession was "hitman".

Of course, the same was true of her now. She wasn't a good person anymore. Wasn't the person she had thought she would be when she was little. In fact, if little her, or teenage her, could see adult her now, she would be appalled. And Chloe didn't know how she felt about that. She thought she was providing a service that the world needed, especially if she only took hits for guys like Groner. Vigilante justice was still justice.

She couldn't believe she just thought those words. Her father would have been horrified by what she'd become.

The thought sobered her. He would be so disappointed in her and probably just as appalled as little Chloe would be. He wouldn't understand why she was doing it, or what had pushed her to it. He had always fought for what was _right_ and what she was doing wasn't anywhere near right. Necessary, maybe, but not right. It stung, a lot, to know that he would probably be ashamed of her.

The worst part was, now that she'd had a taste of what it was like to mete out justice at the end of the barrel of a gun, she didn't think she could stop. She didn't think she wanted to stop. If Lucifer was to be believed, she was good at it. And she thought maybe the fact that he'd sent her out into the world alone meant it was true. Surely he wouldn't have let her go if he thought she was going to get caught. Probably, in his mind, it was too risky that she'd give him up if that happened. She didn't think she would, didn't think she could. He was-

Nope, she wasn't going to go there, not tonight, not while she had to keep half her attention on the bugs. If she missed something because she was too busy being upset over Lucifer, she'd never forgive herself. And she'd probably be thrown in jail without a key, and Trixie would grow up with Dan as her only parent, and why was she doing this again?

The sound of more sheets shifting came from the bedroom bug, along with Groner muttering something she couldn't catch.

Right, that was why. To get justice for the victims who couldn't. She had a week to carry out the hit and didn't want to wait until the last minute. Which meant she probably needed to sleep. Especially if he turned out to be an early-morning type of guy.

Her dreams that night were full of dark brown eyes and wicked smiles, and something that she wanted very dearly being just a hairsbreadth out of reach.

* * *

Chloe sent Trixie off to her weekend at Dan's on Friday night. Then she slipped into what she had started calling her "hitman clothes"—a dark shirt, pants, and cap that she always felt sort of conspicuous in, but Lucifer assured her was perfectly fine for hits like this—and packed a small bag of potential supplies she'd need. She looked at the code breaker and dismissed it; she had the code memorized, so she'd be able to get in without it, and it was the most suspicious of her equipment. She didn't want to get caught with it. She hefted the bag and stowed it away in the trunk of her car, then left for Groner's neighborhood.

When she reached the outskirts of it, she parked in between two houses—so one would think she was a visitor of the other and vice versa—and pulled on a jacket to hide her shoulder holster. Reflective tape on the sleeves made it look like she was just a resident out for a walk after dark, and she could strip it off when she got closer. She put an earbud into on ear so she could listen to the bugs. Then she started the walk to Groner's mansion. It took almost twenty minutes, but it was worth it for the knowledge that her car wasn't anywhere near and wouldn't be connected when someone found his body.

The camera she'd taken out with a rock was still out of commission. So she stripped off the reflective tape and stepped into the security keypad for the gate so that her face wasn't visible. It was angled to catch the face of someone in a car, not someone walking up. She hadn't been caught last time, so she was confident in her assessment that no one was watching the feed. She quickly entered the code and waited for the gate to open.

The little light on the keypad flashed red.

Fuck.

It was no reason to panic, though. She probably just entered the code in wrong in her rush to get it open and get out of sight of the road. This time, she took her time, making sure she got it right. She had left her equipment at home and in the car, taking only the essentials with her to the gate. It would be almost an hour to go to her car and get- Except she had left the codebreaker at home and there was nothing in there that could actually help if the code was rejected again so it had to turn green. It _had_ to.

The light flashed red again. _Fuck_.

She eyed the gate as the little hairs on the back of her neck started to rise. She wasn't going to be able to squeeze through the bars. Maybe if she'd been fifteen years younger and hadn't had a kid, but not now. And it felt like someone was watching her again. She cast her gaze around desperately, both checking to see if she could find anyone spying on her and to find some other way into the grounds. She could go home and then come back tomorrow night, but that seemed like pressing her luck when things were already going wrong.

Her eyes lit on a tree on the side of the fenced in property, closer to the house. She might be able to scale the tree, and there wasn't a code to get out, just one to get in. She made her way carefully over, freezing when a floodlight came on at the neighbor's garage. It didn't hit her, but had she- no, it was just someone getting home there. Her heart was going rabbit fast and she took a deep breath as she continued on, trying to calm it. She was good at this; she didn't need Lucifer. She'd be fine.

The feeling of eyes on her was growing stronger. Should she abandon this attempt and just go home? As much as it would be pressing her luck, killing him tomorrow might be a better idea, with things feeling as wrong as they did. But, just as she was about to call it off, the feeling of being watched faded into nothing. It had just been nerves.

It had been a while since she'd climbed a tree, but she managed to get up and over the fence, having to drop to the ground on the other side. She landed in a crouch, her knees and ankles smarting a bit. But she hadn't pulled anything, so she straightened and made for the servant's entrance. At least that was easy enough to open and turn off the security.

Throughout the walk and all the way to the den, she could hear Groner swearing at whatever sport he was watching on the television. When the sound started to double, she turned off her phone and took out the earbud. Gun in hand, she crept up behind him, the room dark except for the massive television screen. Her shadow played along the far wall, but he didn't notice. Instead, he was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, focused wholly on the basketball game.

"Chad Groner," she said over the sound of the TV.

A thrill ran down her spine as he froze and then jumped up, turning at the same time so he was facing her. She couldn't see him clearly with the light from the TV behind him, but she could picture the panicked look on his face as he saw her, then saw the gun.

"Don't move," she said as he reached to the side.

He froze, which seemed to open the floodgates. "I have a safe upstairs, you can have the money bro, just don't shoot me, okay? My girlfriend's jewelry is-"

"Why don't you shut up and sit back down," she said, her voice rising harshly over his.

He shut up and dropped back onto the couch. She walked slowly around the edge, staying out of arms reach, until she was in front of him, blocking the TV.

"Do you know why I'm here?" she asked. Her heart had slowed to a quiet rhythm, a calm rhythm that flowed through her. Her hands were steady as she aimed at the center of his forehead. She felt… peaceful.

"If you're after money, I can-" He was panicked, and trying to appease her with offers of cash, and it wasn't going to work.

"I seem to remember you being involved in a little trial last year," she said and took satisfaction in watching his eyes widen.

"Wh- What?" Comprehension filled his face as he said, "One of those bitches sent-"

She shot him. The bullet flew true and blood trickled from the small hole in his forehead. She doubted they'd be able to get the blood and brain out of the back of the couch, though. She felt…

She felt like she had done the world a service. Like she had done a good deed. In the back of her mind, she knew it was fucked up that she felt like that. But knowing that didn't change that she did. She felt good, like things in her life were going right again. She felt like she had those last few months with Lucifer training her. Like she was waking up and the cotton that had muffled her world for years was falling away.

With a smile on her face, she began collecting the bugs.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here we are with chapter 8...... enjoy my friends....... enjoy.............

Lucifer was slouching. He never slouched. But there he was _slouching_ like a heathen. Maze would’ve (had already) called it moping, but he wasn’t really, he was just… Well, he was bored. And, maybe… maybe he missed the Detective just a bit. But not _really_, it wasn’t like he was sitting around listening to sad music. 

The music he had playing in the background changed from “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye to Adele’s “Someone Like You”. He sighed deeply. 

Maybe Mazikeen had a point when she’d said he was being pathetic. It was just… every job he took these days (and there were many, he’d needed the distractions) was boring. Not even the one he’d thought would be the most satisfying (a despicable woman, laundering money and sex trafficking teenage girls through the hotel she co-owned. The partner had found out and Lucifer had been all too happy to help with the troublesome business partner) had done anything to sate the writhing of the beast he knew was inside of him. It had only truly gone quiet the first time he’d killed someone in front of the Detective…

He growled and paused the music with a harsh poke at the remote. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her! He was… he needed retail therapy. 

An hour later, he was dressed in a fresh suit and speeding through the streets of LA in his corvette. He parked in front of a set of office buildings and then walked inside like he owned the place (he didn’t but he knew who did). 

“Lucifer!” he heard to his left, when he turned he saw Linda Martin surrounded by a group of rather unsavory looking men. The kind that couldn’t afford her services. 

“Linda, my dear,” he greeted, “I’m in need of your advice on something rather important.”

Linda sighed at him and nodded, “Of course, Lucifer, come with me.” 

He let her lead them away from the men and into what she liked to refer to as her office (it was a large room, with any and all types of weapons hanging on the walls and in display cases). “Now Linda, darling, where are the Glock 43’s?” he asked her, with a grin. 

Linda’s brow furrowed and she considered him carefully for a moment, “That’s not what you’re usually here for…”

Lucifer’s grin faded, but just a bit, “An apology present…”

“What did you do to upset Maze this time?” Linda sighed, but she led him to the gun case.

“When you upset Mazikeen you buy her a knife,” he told her instead, and then immediately regretted it when she considered him carefully. 

“You upset someone who wasn’t Maze?” She asked. “But you don’t talk to anyone regularly except for her!” 

“I’m… I was training someone…” he sighed absently, studying the guns in front of him. Some were ornate, others were merely functional. He knew she’d appreciate something that was… more classic in looks, but he wanted it to be special (though he was more than sure he would never see her again, but he could leave it for her… he knew where she lived…).   
“_You_ were training someone?” she asked, brows raised and head tilted. “You _were_ training someone?”

He rolled his eyes. “It’s not _that_ difficult to believe!” he growled, abandoning his search to glare at the woman in front of him. 

“Lucifer, you once told me that you were never, ever going to train anyone,” Linda told him, her voice was calm, and Lucifer relaxed a little. She was just confused. 

“I got… persuaded,” he said. 

“By whom? And why haven’t you put them in contact with me?” she was watching him carefully. 

He sighed. Perhaps retail therapy had been a terrible idea… “Linda, I really don’t want to ta-” 

“Lucifer, we both know you only come here in person when you actually _do_ want to talk about it,” she cut him off. 

Lucifer’s shoulders slumped. “I… She got too close…” he said, looking away from her. 

“Just her?” Linda asked. 

His eyes shot to hers and then he looked down like he’d been caught. “She said that she… trusted me…” He looked up at her, waiting for her to say something but she didn’t, she just waited. “I told her that she shouldn’t… and then I…” he sighed again and then shook his head.

“Then what?” she asked, a gentle prompt to continue. 

“I told her I didn’t want to work with her any longer, _which_ is why I need to get her an apology Glock!” he smirked, like he knew it could get him almost anywhere. 

Linda just raised a brow at him, and his smirk faded, sometimes he forgot that she’d known him for a while. “You trust her too,” Linda said, considering him. He didn’t answer her, but when his eyes met hers they were steel and fire and Linda looked quickly away. “You don’t need a present for someone to forgive you for hurting them, Lucifer.”

He frowned and tilted his head. “You’re right, Linda. I need something much better than a present.” He turned to walk out but changed his mind at the last second. He better get her that Glock he’d been eyeing during his conversation with Linda. Just in case his new plan didn’t go over well. “On second thought, my dear Linda, I’ll take that one there,” he pointed. It looked like a regular Glock 43, but the metal work had a delicate floral pattern that almost perfectly matched one of his favorite knives (he caught her examining it once, her fingers tracing the pattern on the blade as she watched him carve someone’s heart of their chest as per the explicit instructions of the client. She hadn’t looked away from his hands that night, and he had felt the ghost of those fingers on his skin ever since that day she’d tried to touch his scars and he was… seeing how she traced the metal work on the knife had him _imagining_ things…). 

She sighed heavily and wrapped it up for him. She said something as he rushed out of the door, but he didn’t hear her, nor did he care enough to go back and ask. He would have to call in some favors to get back on the Detective’s good side…

He was standing by his piano, calling in those favors, using different burner phones (purposefully avoiding the one that he’d last used to contact the Detective, which was one he always kept on his person) when another one of his rang. It was the one he had Maze contact him on for jobs. 

“Maze, pet, I’m a little busy at the moment,” he told her as he answered. 

“You usually jump at the chance to go after guys like this,” she tempted.

He paused. She _did_ know his tastes… Perhaps this one would sate the monster that kept him up at night these days. “Go on…”

“Chad Groner. He was in the news about ten months ago,” she said.

A slow smile played across his face. He remembered that his Detective had been following that court case… She’d mentioned it once, he recalled. “You know, Maze, perhaps it’s time for the Detective to show the world what she can do,” he purred. 

“Yeah, okay,” she said simply and was about to hang up when he called out to her over the line. “What.” 

She was annoyed today, and he hesitated for a moment. “Could you ask after her for me?”

“Ugh,” she groaned, and then she hung up. 

“Maze?” he said to the dial tone. He pulled the phone away from his ear and frowned at it. 

He turned back to the notes he was writing. Before Maze called, he’d just finished with a call to his man in the LAPD. He was having Officer Johnson bring everything that John Decker had ever worked on to their usual meeting place. Lucifer never showed his face of course, but the money was good enough for the officer not to care about who, exactly, he would help from time to time. Now there were just a few more things to look into. 

He had one more call to make and then all he had to do was wait. This is what he was good at, flushing out prey and lying in wait for the fatal attack. He dialed a number and waited for it to ring. “Madison, pet,” he started, using the voice he knew few people could resist. “I need you to visit our mutual friend on the inside. Tell him to offer Joseph Fields a deal he should seriously consider…”

Once that was done, he made his way to the back of the restaurant that he always had Officer Johnson drop off everything he asked for. There were three boxes and he piled them into the truck of his car. He hated paperwork, but he would do it, he would figure this out for her. He had more connections than her anyway and could get farther than her with something like this. He knew she had wanted to look into it, she had mentioned it before… He just hoped that she would be pleased that he’d done the work for her. 

He was just starting with the first box when the phone he’d last used to contact her went off and he scrambled for it (desperately looking in all of his pockets and finding it in the inside pocket of his suit jacket). He almost threw it across the room when it wasn’t a message from her, but he stopped himself when he realized it meant she was on the move (he’d put a tracker on it so he knew where she was going to be whenever he needed her). He grinned, predatory and large. He really should make sure that she knew what she was doing…

He was in one of the cars he knew she’d never really recognize because it was too common with the box of her father’s notes and cases and following her before she was even out of the city. Perhaps he should have taught her the streets of LA as he’d learned them… He shook his head and made himself focus. He was trying to evaluate the Detective, not teach her more. He considered her father’s case as he followed her, there really wasn’t much to go on, and the only person that could give him any potentially new information was in jail and hopefully, by now, considering an extremely generous offer. Everyone had a price, he knew, and if someone was willing to pay it, they would always get what they were after. 

Once they got where they were going, he watched Chloe as she put a tracker on the car. He smirked as she was in and out of the parking garage in a matter of moments. He really had taught her well. He was proud of her, something he’d never felt about another person before, and that was confusing, but _she_ was confusing to him, so he didn’t think much of it. Perhaps he would have to talk to Linda about that the next time he saw her…

He covertly followed her on foot to Groner’s house and hid where he knew she wouldn’t see him (behind some small trees and large bushes, the house behind them was unoccupied, it looked like, the ‘for sale’ sign tipping him off (one could never have too many houses… he did like this neighborhood, but there wasn’t enough room between neighbors for his taste. He marked it in his mind as a maybe). He had brought a few files with him and settled in to examine one of them when she broke into the gate. “Good girl, Detective,” he purred with a grin, and then he waited for her come back. 

He was reading some of Officer Decker’s notes, something about a conspiracy in the system, but nothing too specific in these particular files, when Chloe emerged. He waited for about two minutes before he started following her. She was a little more on edge than usual, and he almost wanted to jump out and scare her, but that would be cruel and it _was_ her first solo job… Instead, he watched as she walked past her car and just kept going. She was a bit overly cautious while working on her own perhaps, but she was efficient, and he was glad that he had tailed her. 

He sped back to LA with a smirk on his face, knowing that he had done well to train her. He hoped that she would get the chance to bug the bastard’s phone. A man like that was likely to notice the now broken camera. He let his thoughts drift as he drove and found himself wondering why a beat cop had been doing investigative work that was well above his pay grade. He thought that perhaps Chloe was a bit too much her father’s child, she had nearly gone down the same road as her father. The only difference was that she left before she was killed for it.

He hoped that he wasn’t digging into something that went too deep, but he knew that things like this went deeper than anyone thought to look. He just hoped that the Detective would be satisfied with finding the truth about her father’s killer, whether or not it’s Joseph Fields. He knew that if that was the case, she would probably drop the matter. He hoped that she would anyway. 

When he got back to his penthouse, some of his informants had left messages for him. He hoped that Madison had got his message to Joe Fields. There was only one way to get information and that was to offer protection. He had so many connections and he really could do everything for the man but help him escape. He supposed that if he wasn’t guilty he could get him out of prison, but that sort of thing never really went well. He wondered what he would have to do for Joe Fields to get the information he needed.

He didn’t get anything substantial from the leads that had come back, so he kept reading through the files and things that John Decker had left behind. It was almost as if the man was grasping at straws, and Lucifer was almost tearing his hair out at the vague references to something shady happening. He was skimming over some of the Officer’s notes, some hastily taken notes, for that matter, when one word in particular caught his attention. _Sinnerman_. Lucifer put his face in his hands and sighed deeply. Of course this is how it would have to go.

Perhaps John Decker had just… come across the name and then dismissed it (though he had been looking into it around the time that Lucifer had started to establish himself in LA, the Sinnerman at the time had been poking into the police force, trying to establish himself as well). Lucifer could only hope that this wouldn’t turn into something too big to handle. He pulled out all of John Decker’s files and immediately started going through them with renewed focus. He hoped that this wasn’t going to drive him into an early grave. He still hadn’t got the Detective to forgive him yet, and he didn’t want to put her in danger… He had no idea what he would do if the Sinnerman was responsible. Well, he would do what he must to protect himself, and, if it suited him, to protect the Detective from the monster that even he was a little afraid of (and he knew it would suit him, for some reason to be without her was… it was like the beast in him was only content when she was near). 

Just as he was getting more than a little resigned to the fact that, yes John Decker had been looking into the Sinnerman, one of his many phones rang. He answered it, breathing out the smoke from a joint he’d just rolled to help him relax. This Sinnerman business was no laughing matter and it was making him tense. “Ah, Madison, my dear,” he purred, “what did Mr. Fields say to our offer?” 

He listened to what she had to say with a grin. 

“Excellent, pet!” he told her. “Yes, it’ll be in your account within the hour. Thank you again, my dear. And don’t forget, the Devil always knows where to find you…”

Once he hung up, he was arranging a meeting with Joe Fields for the next day. Off the books of course. There was no way he was going to go sniffing around something that reeked of the Sinnerman without taking more than a few precautions. He thought of it as a metaphorical gas mask. 

He stretched and then after a moment of deliberation, he pulled out the phone he’d been using to track the Detective. The little dot on the screen said that she was at home. He wondered, or rather, let himself this time, because he usually wouldn’t… he wondered what she was like with her daughter. He couldn’t imagine her being anything like his parents, but he… what other way could a parent be? Though she had told him just before he’d… dismissed her, that she needed to spend more time with her daughter, so perhaps she was… He shook off his thoughts and sighed. This was going to get him nowhere…

He needed a break from John Decker’s notes, a break from thinking about the Detective and some very stiff drinks (he’d take a stiff something else, but that would require going downstairs and it was a little too early to open Lux for the night). He went to his bar and poured himself a drink, then he took the rest of his joint out onto the balcony to enjoy the warmth of the late afternoon sun. He loved LA. The debauchery, the seedy underbelly, the fact that everyone could be bought and sold… It was the perfect city for a monster like him. For a monster like the Sinnerman too. But Lucifer had got here first, and he’d had to show the Sinnerman that he was the only one in LA that could never be bought or sold. 

He wasn’t sure about that sort of thing now. There wasn’t much that the Sinnerman could do to him. Just kill him, really, and what was something like that to man like him? He played judge, jury, and executioner whenever he took a hit. The Sinnerman… all he did was call the shots, and Lucifer knew people that could tell him exactly when and where those shots were taking place. If he were a less cautious man, he would let the Sinnerman know exactly who he was and where to find him, but even the Devil has his secrets. The only way for the Sinnerman to contact him was through Maze, and Lucifer never met with clients face to face. The Sinnerman also only knew him as the Devil. So there was that.

He let himself stand over the streets of LA and watch the cars in the early moments of rush hour. This was his city in a way that it would never belong to the Sinnerman. He had built himself here, had made himself into the monster that he kept locked away inside, and he was the worst nightmare for someone like the Sinnerman. A rogue that couldn’t be controlled. That wouldn’t be. Lucifer knew that he was considered a threat by the Sinnerman and those that worked for him. 

He took a deep breath and watched the flow of traffic below him stretch longer and longer as the sky darkened. He thought about making an appearance in the club. It had been a few days since he’d felt up to the crowds and the piano, the showmanship of it all. Even that was becoming something he’d got bored of. It seemed the Detective had wedged herself into his life and refused to leave. Idly, he wondered if he would ever find pleasure in anything ever again. Except sex. That was still pleasurable. A part of him wanted to go to Lux, to mingle and revel and bring someone back upstairs, but he just… couldn’t get himself to move. The night was just starting, he looked at his watch. It was only eight. 

He thought about the Detective and what she might be doing. The tracker in her burner phone told him that she was at home, and he wondered… Well, he remembered being a child, but he… He didn’t think his childhood was considered normal, what with his father being as powerful as he was, so he wondered what exactly the Detective and her daughter did when she was home. He wondered if she was any different with her child than she was with him. He thought that she would have to be considering what they actually did together (what he wished that they would do together again). 

Eventually, he got tired of watching traffic and decided to jump back into Officer Decker’s notes. He had to make sure that he wasn’t getting them into a mess with the Sinnerman. If that was the case, he would have to tread carefully, and perhaps if the Sinnerman was the one responsible for the Detective’s father’s death, he would have to take care of the whole thing himself. Everything would have to be done quietly. 

He spent most of the night deep in Decker’s notes. He was remarkably like his daughter in a few ways, and not like her at all in others. She was more direct, much more jaded than her father had been. He thought that she was much better suited for the work she was doing now, the killing and placing bugs and such. He could imagine her as a detective on the force, always working to uncover the truth even as it proved her main suspect innocent. 

He could appreciate her pursuit of the truth. It had got her and her father into trouble, and yet she still pursued it. It got her father killed, and still, she searched. He did much the same in his work, had taught her to as well. She was a woman that stuck to her principles and Lucifer could appreciate that, had appreciated it. They used to talk about anything and everything that came to mind (the boredom of stakeouts forcing them to talk to each other, and once, play a very painful game of ‘I-spy’ that involved the same light green bush at least four times), and he felt that they knew each other well enough. 

It wasn’t that he missed her, per say, it was just… well, he missed her talking to him, of course. The intellectual stimulation of someone like her, someone that could actually keep up with him. She was genuinely funny, a bit awkward, but in a charming way. He shook himself out of his thoughts and sighed. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about her, not like that! Not at all, really, but that was… He’d been thinking about her for the last nine months and didn’t quite know how to stop…

He wanted her back with him. He wanted to work with her again. He wanted to feel the life drain out of someone with her eyes on him, burning as they always did. He’d had dreams about wanting her… not just sexually, but in other ways as well. Her next to him while he worked, while he slept… and those dreams were always the worst because he didn’t understand them, didn’t want to have any more of them (they were addicting and made him ache when he woke and realized that they weren’t real, that he was alone or that it wasn’t the Detective in his bed…). He shoved away from his desk, frustrated with his thoughts and decided that a night out would do him some good. He made himself change his suit and then he went out to find someone to pass the time with. 

In the morning, earlier than he expected to be up, he slipped out of his company’s front door and sighed. It had been a satisfying night, very acrobatic (and he squashed down the part of him, the beast in the cage that wasn’t satisfied and wouldn’t be, not until he could get the Detective to forgive him). He stretched and got back into his corvette, lighting a cigarette after he pulled away from the curb. He had to meet Joseph Fields at the prison today and he wanted to make an impression. He always did, he knew, but he wanted this man to know that he could get him whatever he desired with no problem at all. He took a deep drag of his cigarette, smirking when he accidentally thought about how the Detective would wrinkle her nose at his bad habit.

On the way to Lux, he managed to take a bit of a detour. Well, ‘managed’ was perhaps, the wrong word… it was more that, before he’d left his host’s house, he’d checked the phone he always had on him, the one he used to track the Detective whenever he needed to. Not that he needed to anymore, but he… Well, he had to admit it was a bit stalkerish and he shouldn’t be keeping tabs on her, but she _did_ know who he was, and he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t go to the cops. Not that he thought she would, but there was nothing wrong with being cautious. 

He pulled up to an apartment complex and he was about to drive off, thinking that this was had been an extremely bad idea, when he heard her voice. He almost didn’t turn to look but when he did… he’d only ever seen her a few times in daylight, and her eyes, they were a different color when the sun was out… not as dark, but just as… He imagined they would feel like they always did. Like the hair on the back of his neck was standing up and then burning along wherever her eyes landed on him. “Monkey, we’re running late!” she called into the open door. 

A little girl that looked almost nothing like her mother appeared in the door way. “I’m ready, Mommy!” she said brightly, and smiled. Lucifer’s eyes tightened and he tilted his head, idly wondering how the child ate when she was missing so many teeth. 

He didn’t linger, not like he had when he’d been watching her break into Groner’s house, he drove away as soon as Chloe had turned back to lock the door behind them. The sight of the child had reminded him of why he’d had his… spat with the Detective. But he was determined to get back on her good side (it was his fault that she’d blindsided him with the mention of her daughter in the first place, he’d had the information at the tips of his fingers, and he hadn’t used it at all, but then… it was his fault they had become so close to begin with, wasn’t it?), and he hoped that she appreciated what he was doing for her enough to at least listen to his apology. 

He rushed through his morning routine and chose one of his more inconspicuous cars to visit the prison. It wouldn’t be good for business, either of them, if someone saw Lucifer Morningstar was visiting a prisoner. He was featured in the tabloids sometimes, his parties giving him alibis when he needed them, and he’d never been a private person, not with things that the paparazzi cared about. He’d had more than a few lovers try to blackmail him with sex tapes, but that had never worked well for them. He knew that if someone saw him at the prison he would be hounded by some of those paparazzi for a while and that would cause his work to suffer. Not the club, but the killing people for money. 

Lucifer had friends everywhere, different friends than the Sinnerman, and he used them to set up a meeting with Joseph Fields. They wouldn’t sell him out, he had them too deep in his pockets for that and they knew he could end them with just a word. He was sitting in a room, one with a table and chairs, when a guard (Anthony Stephens, if Lucifer remembered correctly, and he usually did) brought Fields into the room. 

“Thank you, my dear, Anthony,” he purred with a smirk, and then he tucked a few hundred dollars into his hand.

“Of course, sir,” he nodded, and then he left the room. 

Joseph Fields was eyeing him warily from his chair, but Lucifer paid him no mind. “Mr. Fields,” Lucifer started after he straightened his cufflinks.

“You’re him,” was the response. “The… the Devil…”

Lucifer’s grin was sharp and all teeth, “And you know that I can get you whatever you want.” Mr. Fields nodded. “Good. Now, what do you desire more than anything in the world? And don’t say money unless it’s exactly what you want. I want to know what the one thing you’d consider selling your soul to the Devil is, and then you’re going to give me the information I want.”

“My… my soul?” the man stuttered; he was starting to sweat. 

“Joey,” Lucifer sang, and his eyes caught Mr. Fields and held them. “What do you want.”

“My daughter’s pregnant and she… I want to be there for the christening… but I… the warden won’t give me leave…” he said, and then he put his head down on the table. 

“Because of what you did?” Lucifer asked. Joe’s head shot up and he glared at Lucifer, whose brows raised, “Oh, you didn’t, did you?” 

Joe swallowed loudly. “Wh-what do you mean? I-I confessed!” 

Lucifer rolled his eyes, “Yes, yes, you’re very convincing. Now… I have no problem with you staying in prison for the rest of your life, and being paid handsomely for it, I’d wager, but I do need one thing from you…”

“Which is?” 

“Who _are_ you covering for?”

Joe paused. “I can’t tell you that…”

“Then I can’t help you see your granddaughter’s christening,” Lucifer sighed, and then he got up and started towards the door. His hand had barely touched the metal of the knob when he was called back. “Yes?” Lucifer asked, brow raised. 

“I… I can’t tell you who I’m… but I can tell you where the money’s coming from…” Joe offered, and he looked desperate (like the Sinnerman was involved, sort of desperate).

“Alright,” Lucifer said, and then he stuck out his hand. “You tell me who’s paid you, and I get you leave when the time comes… Do we have a deal?”

Joseph Fields took a deep breath and then shook his hand looking like he wished he had another choice. “We have a deal…” he sighed. 

“Excellent!” Lucifer purred, and then he sat across from him.

An hour after he’d arrived, Lucifer Morningstar strolled out of the prison with a name and high spirits. He could get the name of the real killer out of Boris Sokalov and then he could go to the Detective and get her to forgive him. He knew that she would appreciate something like this. She had a strong sense of justice, and he thought that perhaps she would appreciate righting this particular wrong. Especially since this was so personal. 

He would have to find Boris Sokalov and ask for a meeting. The Bratva could be difficult to deal with and if they were mixed up with the Sinnerman it would be even more so. He had connections in the Bratva, he had connections everywhere and he knew he would have to use a favor or two with Boris. He didn’t mind because all of this was bringing him one step closer to working with the Detective again. That was the most important aspect of all this. And not catching the Sinnerman’s attention. That was also important. 

In the end, Boris was easy enough to find (though it did take two favors, and that was just a bit annoying). Talking to him however would be another matter entirely. Not that Lucifer didn’t think that he could get Boris to talk to him, but if the Sinnerman was involved, Lucifer would have to be careful about the where. He was in his car, and he hadn’t been _watching_ the Detective per say, but he had seen her take her daughter to school twice that week. But he was in his car, one of them anyway, and he was watching Boris and his men. He was a very cautious man, Boris Sokalov, and he always had at least one bodyguard at all times. Even when he was asleep. Lucifer thought that that was a bit excessive, but the Sinnerman didn’t know where he lived like he did Boris.

Every week Boris went to a sauna in Bratva territory and that was where Lucifer planned to talk to him. He didn’t care for much of an audience (unless it was the Detective), but it couldn’t be helped. If he didn’t think that the Sinnerman had bugged Boris’s home, he would have broken in and waited for him there. With a sigh, he made his way into the sauna. No one really noticed him, but he did get more than a few appreciative looks, all of which he encouraged. He couldn’t change who he was, or that he was wildly attractive. 

He did manage to corner Boris and his men in under an hour, so he felt confident about his chances. “Boris!” Lucifer greeted, and the two men on either side of the aging Russian stepped forward to stop him from coming any closer. He knew that he could easily bring both men down at once, but he decided to let Boris have his little show of power. “Now, now, gentlemen, we can be civil. All I need is to have a conversation.”

Boris looked him up and down, and Lucifer let him, knowing that it was the only way to get close enough to him. “What sort of conversation?” he asked. 

“Business, Boris,” Lucifer smirked. The fact that it was personal business wasn’t important enough to divulge. 

Boris watched him for a moment, and then nodded to his men to let Lucifer pass. Lucifer let his smirk turn into a predatory grin. Once Lucifer was seated next to him, Boris asked in his thick accent, “What sort of business?” 

“Tell me, Boris, in the summer of 2000, late July, do you remember paying a man to take the blame for the murder of a cop?” Lucifer asked softly enough not to be overheard. 

“Who the Hell are you?” Boris hissed.

Lucifer leaned in to whisper, “Precisely.”

He pulled back and Boris’s face was pale and there was sweat beading on his forehead. They were in a sauna, but Lucifer knew this was different. “Wh-what do you want?” he asked. 

“Who was the real killer?” Lucifer growled. Boris started shaking his head, but Lucifer tutted at him. “Boris,” he practically sang, smirking when the other man shivered. “I can get into your home, kill you and your men in fifteen different ways, and leave without a trace. Even _he_ won’t find me.” Boris gulped loudly. “Now tell me, Boris, my dear, who killed the cop.”

Boris was silent as Lucifer stared him down. “He won’t like this. It was on his order…” he sighed. 

“I don’t care about him, I want to know who pulled the trigger,” Lucifer’s voice was deadly, and he never looked away from Boris. When there was no answer from Boris, Lucifer continued, like he was having a pleasant conversation, “Tell me who it was, and I won’t rip his esophagus out of his throat and strangle you with it.” His eyes ticked to the guard that was staring to get a little too close. Boris held up a hand to stop him from interfering.

“It was… it was the deputy warden of the prison! Something Smith,” Boris sighed. “But that was years ago, I.. Please! Please that’s all I can remember!”

Lucifer stared at him for a tense moment, his head tilting to the side as he considered the information he’d been given. “You tell him I spoke to you, and you’ll regret ever being alive in the first place, do you understand?” 

Boris nodded frantically and Lucifer got up and walked away. He knew that Boris was too scared to say anything to anyone, so he wasn’t too worried. His threat was enough. He got dressed in the locker room, flirted with some of the men on his way out of the building, and then he drove back to Lux (he resisted swinging by the Detective’s location, she was out on a stakeout of some kind, but it was close… he wanted to… she calmed the beast inside him… Even seeing her from afar made it settle in its cage…).

There was a bounce in Lucifer’s step as he walked into Lux. He was in the best mood, excited to set up his apology to the Detective. It was Thursday, and he knew that she had scheduled a sitter for Friday, so he knew she would be… cleaning for Groner. It gave him the rest of the night and most of tomorrow to look up every detail about Perry Smith, the current warden of the city prison. At the time of Officer Decker’s murder, he had been the deputy warden and if Boris’s fear had been any indication, he was ordered to kill the officer by the Sinnerman. 

Lucifer wasn’t at all concerned about going any higher than Warden Smith, but he also knew that if Chloe… if the Detective knew about the Sinnerman’s involvement she wouldn’t rest until he was stopped. He knew that if she did find out, if she ever tried to go after the crime lord, he would do whatever it took to protect her. The beast in its cage bristled and tried to escape at the mere thought of her in danger and he had never… Yes, he would kill to protect Maze and Linda and… he would kill for them, certainly, but… He never… he never knew that the thought of someone, of the Detective, in danger would make him want to flay someone alive. Slowly, and taking the greatest amount of care to separate the flesh from the muscles… But that was besides the point, because he would make sure that she never found out. He had never lied to her, had promised not to. Withholding information wasn’t _lying_ exactly, so he thought that it would be alright.

He usually didn’t do his own research, but he needed it by tomorrow. He grabbed his laptop (specially made for finding dirt on people, he had access to more than a few federal databases) and started to research. He called a few of his contacts, to have some details verified as he found information. He spent the whole night finding information and having his contacts help him verify the things he’d found out. Perry Smith had done things for the Sinnerman. A lot of things. More than a few of those things were murder. Not really the worst crime, but what bothered Lucifer about it was that he had others paid to go to jail for him. He had set up the same thing for others that came to him after committing crimes of their own. 

Once Lucifer was satisfied with everything he could find about Warden Perry Smith (at about 4:43 in the morning), he fell into bed after stripping. He was exhausted. He had barely slept while he had been… without the Detective as his partner. He had been doing his best to keep as occupied as possible because he hadn’t wanted to think. Not about how she had… well… it had been more his fault than hers but she… He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

When he woke the next afternoon, he rolled out of bed and into the shower. He took his time getting ready, he knew that the Detective would take out her mark later. But he wanted to make sure he had everything ready. Once he was dressed, he made his way downstairs to take care of some club business as he usually did on Friday afternoons. Signing for orders and the like, making sure everyone was ready for the weekend.

As he usually did on the days that he was going to see the Detective, he puttered around his penthouse trying to waste time. He gathered all of his intel and set in on the bar, and then he grabbed the gun he bought her. He hoped that she would like it. He hoped that she would use it. A weapon designed like that should be taken care of and used often. It had been one of a kind, he could tell, designed by someone who knew their weapons. He wasted time by flipping through every station on the TV more than once and pacing back and forth in front of it. Once he had wasted enough time (hours and hours of it), he waked through the garage and picked out one of his cars. He set the gun and the files in the passenger seat and drove to Groner’s home. When he got there (rather, once he parked a few blocks away), he paused before exiting the car. He wondered if he should bring her presents with him… He thought perhaps of watching the whole thing from his tablet in the car and then meeting her at hers but decided that he wanted to see her do her first job in person. In the end, he swapped the gun in his shoulder holster for the one he bought her. He took a moment to trace the metal work… It really was the most beautiful design. He could really only tuck the file under his arm and make his way back to the bushes he’d hidden in last time. 

He had been watching the gate for about an hour and a half, hoping that she had bugged that as well so she could get onto the grounds, when he saw her walking up the street. She looked confident, and he smirked as she stood in front of the gate. He could see her a bit in the light of the lamp near her. He let his eyes linger on her features before taking in the rest of her. She was wearing dark clothes and a cap, and he smirked. That was his Detective… His brow furrowed with hers when she tried to input the code, and he growled low in his throat when he realized that she _had_ forgotten to bug the gate (and, it seemed, the bastard’s phone like he had hoped that she would do). He hoped that she brought the code breaker that he’d given her, but as he watched her try again he huffed quietly and rolled his eyes. He thought he’d taught her to be prepared for every possibility. He was staring at her more intently than he meant to, and he looked away when she started looking around. 

When he looked back she was gone and he almost cursed until he heard a slight rustle and saw her going over the fence near the tree. He smirked again. Clever Detective! He walked up to the gate, silent as the grave, and watched her through the bars. He could barely see her outline in the darkness and once she rounded the house he followed her over the fence. He caught up to her when she was in the main house, but he tried not to follow her too closely. He watched her move through the room with a soft smirk. She was just… it seemed like she was in her element. 

Once she encountered her mark, he got as close as he dared and leaned against the wall so he could watch her. He wondered how she would kill the man… She hadn’t brought a kit, but Lucifer knew she liked the cleaner deaths better than the particularly gruesome ones. He smirked. He knew his gift would be put to use…

“Chad Groner,” she said, her voice was made of steel and barbed wire and he let the corners of his lips curl up gently. Her stance was settled and confident and her with a gun in her hand was perhaps, the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen. 

He watched as Groner tried to negotiate, but she cut him off. She was so _demanding_… His Detective… He smirked as she held the other man at gun point and couldn’t stop his sinister grin when she mentioned the bastard’s court case. She hadn’t let the man, if he could be called such a thing, finish talking just shot him right in the forehead. 

She stood there for a moment, just looking at what she’d done, and Lucifer let his eyes roam all over her. She was magnificent, she was perfect, she was… even this had calmed the beast inside of him… 

“Oh, Detective!” he sang as he stepped out of the shadows. She turned towards him quick as lightning, and then there was a gunshot, and he felt the bullet pierce his leg. “Bloody fucking hell, love!” he cursed, setting the file on the counter next to him and gripping his thigh.

“Lucifer, _what the fuck_ are you doing here!” she hissed at him, and then stepped toward him, but stopped herself from coming any closer. 

“I wanted to see you do your first job,” he told her sheepishly, but then he glared up at her with something _he_ wouldn’t call a pout but perhaps she would. “You shot me!” he whined. “I bring you presents, and you shoot me for it!”

Chloe blinked at him. “Presents.”

“Well, I don’t know if I want to give them to you now you’ve _shot me_…” he muttered.

Chloe sighed and finally, _finally_ came close enough to touch him. “Lucifer,” she scolded, and he rolled his eyes.

He reached under his jacket with the hand not currently covered in his own blood and pulled the gun out and offered it to her. “That’s for you, though I’m not sure if you deserve it any longer,” he grumbled at her, and tried to hide a smirk as she glared at him. She barely looked at it, just tucked it in the back of her trousers and knelt to have a look at his leg. 

“It’s just a graze, you big baby,” she grumbled back at him and then tried to steer him out of the room towards the exit. 

He scoffed and pulled away from her. “Darling,” he started. 

“Lucifer, we need to go!”

“Detective, there are no neighbors close enough to hear anything!” he sighed, frustrated that she wasn’t listening to him. He raised a brow until she sighed and crossed her arms. At least she was going to hear him out. “This,” he said, placing a hand on the file next to him (he expected her eyes to follow the movement of his hand but instead, she was watching his face, watching him, and he held out hope that perhaps… perhaps she’d missed him too…), “will give you everything you need to know to avenge your father.”

Her shoulders loosened and she gaped at him. 

“Now, help me to my car, darling, I’ve got to give Gerry a call,” he sighed. “It wouldn’t do to have my blood all over your first… cleaning job.”


	9. Chapter 9

Chloe took the folder from him with fingers that wanted to tremble. He had- Her father's-

She shoved the folder into the back of her pants with the—gorgeous; she hadn't had a chance to study it but she knew it was gorgeous—gun and looped Lucifer's arm around her shoulders. She was hardly going to be any help with their height difference, but it made something warm grow steadily in her chest. Something about his touch and his gifts had her halfway to forgiving him.

But only halfway.

"Detective," Lucifer whined as she half dragged him with the arm hooked around his waist, "Could we perhaps slow down a bit? This is starting to hurt rather a lot."

"It's just a flesh wound," she said as she glanced down to double check.

It was bleeding and the fabric around the wound was soaked in blood, but it hadn't started dripping on the floor yet, which was what she was worried most about. So she got a better grip as he sputtered a denial and dragged him out the servant's entrance.

"Think you can make it over the fence?" she asked quietly when they reached the edge of the property, already mentally mapping the way back to the gate controls so she could open it for him.

"Of course," he said, sounding offended. She couldn't help the small smile that escaped, and he returned it. For a moment, they just stood there, staring at each other and smiling quietly. It felt… nice.

Then he was motioning her closer, his smile morphing into a leer, as he said, "Need a boost?"

She gave him a withering look but accepted his help. At the top, she double-checked that she still had the gun and the folder—the weight of both somehow comforting even as her stomach started to churn with anxiety over what might be in the folder—then dropped to the ground. Lucifer followed her over, his elegant movement somewhat ruined by the quiet curses over how much his leg hurt.

"The bugs," she gasped as he hit the ground, taking a step back toward the fence. How could she have forgotten to collect the bugs? She needed to-

Lucifer caught her sleeve before she could move any further and shook his head. "Gerry will take care of it," he said quietly and she nodded, relieved.

They stood in the shadow of the trees, until Chloe was almost overpowered with the urge to squirm uncomfortably under his gaze. He looked her up and down and she couldn't help but return the look, scanning him for other injuries. Scanning him like this was the last time she was going to get to look at him.

"Well," he finally said, his hand twitching like he was going to reach out to her. She didn't know if she was glad that he had stopped himself. "I suppose this is goodbye. You're clearly capable of-"

"No," she said, interrupting him on impulse and shocking him into silence. "I mean, yes, I'm capable of doing this on my own, but we work well together. We've _been_ working well together. I don't think-" She stopped to take a breath, to really _look_ at him, at the banked fire in his eyes that almost looked like hope. Then she continued with, "This doesn't have to be goodbye just because you-"

She shook her head. He was leaning forward, toward her, hanging on her words. It certainly seemed like he had missed her as much as she had missed him. But he still wasn't saying anything, wasn't agreeing or telling her to leave.

"How about I follow you home and we'll talk," she finally said, quietly. "It's not like I've forgiven you entirely, but I think we should… talk."

His face went from intently listening to guarded in the blink of an eye. "I don't think that's necessary," he said, and all the warmth that had gathered in her chest dropped away.

"Alright," she said and hooked her thumb over her shoulder. "I'm just gonna-"

"Of course," he said. "I'll- Of course."

Then he was fading back into the trees and she turned to head back to her car, her feet feeling heavier than they had in a long time and the folder stuffed in the back of her pants a heavy weight that she couldn't ignore.

* * *

She tried to ignore it anyway.

On the walk back to her car, she took it from the back of her pants and held it under her arm, not flipping through it while she walked.

On the drive home, she left it on the passenger seat next to her, not picking it up at stoplights.

And inside the house, she put it on the kitchen table, not looking at it. She had the entire weekend, assuming Dan didn't call (yet again) for her to pick up Trixie early. She didn't need to go through it all at once. She didn't need to see the face of the man who had killed her father. At least not until she had put the gun Lucifer gifted her with away and changed.

It was later than she'd expected to get back, and the adrenaline crash was coming. But the folder's presence buzzed in the back of her mind, keeping her on alert. It was almost enough to distract her from the gun, to make her dump it in her gun safe in a hurry to get to the contents of the folder. But her bedroom light glinted off the metal of the barrel in a way that was strikingly familiar.

She turned the Glock 43 in her hand and traced along the design etched in the side. It was a winding vine of delicate flowers, and she could have sworn she had seen it somewhere before. She could feel the design under her fingertips, and almost expected a bur to catch her skin at some of the turns, but the edges of the etching felt smooth.

Lucifer's knife. It was the same design that had run up the blade of one of his knives. She remembered the night she'd first seen it; Lucifer was using it to carve the heart out of a man by special request, like some messed up Snow White pastiche. She had slipped it from his fingers once the heart was removed and traced the design down the length of the blade just as she was doing now. She remembered the feeling of the blood slipping under her gloved finger and Lucifer's murmur of "Careful darling, it's sharp."

She had glanced at him then, met his gaze—full of something infinite and dark—and hadn't flinched. Instead, she'd told him with a huff of something like laughter that she knew what she was doing and that something as deadly as that didn't bite if you took care of it. The darkness had fled from his eyes at that and he'd turned back to the dead body hurriedly, his voice almost rough when he told her to put it with the other tools when she was done.

She wondered if this was meant as an apology—it was certainly gorgeous enough for that—or if it was a claiming. A way to be sure she remembered who had taught her almost everything she knew about killing people and getting away with it. A way to tie her hits to him in her thoughts whenever she used it.

She quickly placed it in the gun safe and locked the door. No, it must be an apology. He wasn't the type to play mind games, not from what she knew about him. It might not be much, but she was sure of that. It was even an apology she might accept.

When he was gone out of her life, she missed him. It wasn't an empty feeling like when she had told Dan to move out. It was more a nagging itch at the back of her mind. A "shouldn't I have heard from him by n- oh right" feeling that never quite went away. And now-

Well, he had clearly been thinking about her. And that wasn't nothing, was it?

She changed into more comfortable clothes and went back to the kitchen. The folder was still there, taunting her, but she couldn't open it yet. She needed to clean the gun she'd used to kill Groner and let Maze know that the job was done.

She pulled out her burner and dialed the number she had memorized for Maze, who picked up with a, "Did you forgive him?"

"What?" Chloe asked, her hands freezing in the middle of picking up her Glock. There was only one person Maze could be talking about, and Chloe was more surprised that she cared than anything else.

"Lucifer. Did you forgive him?" she asked again, more slowly this time. "Is he going to stop moping around the place?"

"He was _moping_?" Chloe said as she resumed taking apart her gun, unable to picture it at all. He was too confident in himself, too confident in his actions and who he was to spend any amount of time moping. He was a take action kind of guy, and if he had regretted cutting her off so much, surely he would have…

She cast a look to her bedroom door, the gun case hidden under her bed.

"The job's done," she said over Maze, whose disgust with Lucifer was coming through loud and clear.

"Payment will be in the usual account," Maze said immediately. There was a pause, and then she asked, sounding uncomfortable, "How are you doing?"

"I'm fine," Chloe said, smiling. "I got a _very_ nice Glock today. Definitely nice enough that I might forgive the person who gave it to me."

"Good," Maze said shortly, and Chloe wasn't sure if she was referring to the forgiveness or that she was doing fine. "Listen, I was thinking. A couple of people we usually work with are going to be in town in a few months. We should do a night out."

Chloe blinked at that. She hadn't realized she was- Did Maze think of her as a friend? "I, uh," she said, scrambling to come up with a response. It wasn't that she objected to hanging out with Maze, it was just that her contacts were limited, thus limiting the number of people who could narc on her. Did she really want to expand that list?

"Think about it," Maze said, then hung up.

Chloe stared at the phone for a moment before putting it down. She quickly finished cleaning her Glock, her hands steady and sure even as her thoughts were racing. _Could_ she meet more people in the business? Would Maze put her in danger? She didn't know if she trusted her that far. Hell, she didn't know if she trusted Lucifer that far anymore.

Something in her heart squeezed at that thought. It wasn't betrayal, it _wasn't_.

She put her gun in the safe and took the folder to the couch. She couldn't put this off anymore, shouldn't focus on how she felt about a fellow hitman over finding out more about the man who really murdered her father. Because it _had_ been a cover-up, Fields was innocent, and her dad's actual killer had been walking free.

She flipped open the folder and started to read.

* * *

Chloe slowly closed the folder and sat there, her hand flat on it, holding it closed as if that could keep everything that was in it from escaping into her head. But it was too late for that.

Perry Smith. The warden for the prison her father’s killer was kept in. She’d had something of a relationship with him when she was a cop—not a friendship, but something more than an acquaintanceship—but that had faded after she left.

It was official. It was _real_. Her father was murdered in cold blood to cover up a criminal network he was investigating. And the man who went down for it had been a patsy. Paid to confess to a crime he didn’t commit.

An innocent man had been locked up and the key thrown away. The first thing she needed to do was call the prison and get a meeting with him. To see about getting him out.

And then…

And then.

And then it would be time to deal with the warden. There hadn’t been anything surprising in the folder beyond the Joe Fields’ innocence. It was an address, a series of crimes and unsurprisingly coverups committed by the warden, a list of payoffs, and a surveillance log. It was only twenty-four hours, but that was enough. Enough to see that he was still on the take. Enough to see him extort at least one person and blackmail another. He was a busy, busy man.

She pulled out her phone and dialed the prison.

"Joe Fields?" the man on the other end of line said. "He’s dead. He won’t be visiting anybody but the Devil any time soon."

Chloe blinked, hard. It took her a good thirty seconds to realize he meant the Christian Devil, not her fellow hitman. "How…?" she asked, drifting off, not sure how to phrase the question she really wanted an answer to.

"I can’t give you that information, ma’am. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Uh, no, thanks," she said and hung up without saying goodbye and dropped her phone on top of the folder.

Dead. Joe Fields was dead and she would put money on it being because Lucifer went to visit him. Smith must have gotten suspicious and had him killed. It was too much of a coincidence.

She felt… bad. She felt bad for his family, and bad for the man that had spent so many years behind bars for no reason. She felt bad that she couldn’t really do anything about it, couldn’t bring him back any more than she could bring her father back.

What she could do, was get them both justice.

She pressed her hands flat on the table, ready to rise to her feet but not quite able. She wanted to call Lucifer. Her first instinct was still to call Lucifer when she was doing a job, but he- She had offered an olive branch and he had rejected it. If he wanted to talk to her, he would call. She wasn’t making the first move anymore. If he was expecting her to be as persistent as she had been about becoming his student in the first place, well. He would have to be disappointed because she wasn’t going to beg for his attention. She wasn’t that kind of girl.

She started making a mental list of what she needed to do in her head. First step was to find out more about the life of Perry Smith. Who did he owe money to, who was he working for, what was his family like. All things she could do with at work. She hadn’t actually been into the office in a bit, instead working through email and her laptop. It was time to change that.

Who needed sleep, anyway?

* * *

"Was starting to wonder if you still worked here," Archie said when she slid in through the door on quiet feet.

"I’ve been getting results," she said shortly.

He grumbled under his breath, but she wasn’t listening. Instead she dropped her bag by her desk and sat, pulling out her laptop and plugging it in. There were cards she needed in her desk drawers, business cards of associates who might be able to get her more information, and might be willing to keep it quiet for the right price.

She was lucky the job for Groner had paid as much as it did. Paying off white collar informants wasn’t going to be any trouble for the near future.

So she started putting out feelers. She emailed a few people from an encrypted account, texted a few more from her burner, and left a coded voicemail message for Maze. She knew she should also bug Smith and run some surveillance on him. But, even as impatient as she was, that could wait. At least until she had heard back from a couple people.

When she next looked up, the angle of the sunlight coming in through the window had changed and she was four emails deep with a source Lucifer introduced her to—virtually, of course—about Smith's recent finances. He was definitely being paid off by someone, and her source was trying to track down who.

It was, she had to admit, a little bit busywork, distracting herself from the question that was pinging around her head. What was she going to do about Smith?

She knew what Lucifer expected. He had provided her with this as proof Smith was the real villain with the intention of her killing him. But there was something appealing about the idea of him spending the rest of his life in jail. Especially as a former warden. Hell, maybe she could get him sent to the same prison he worked at…

And maybe, in a perfect world where the criminal justice system actually meted out justice, that would be a solution. But she lived in this one, where the probability of him getting a life sentence was slim, and the probability of him getting out on parole all too high.

She was going to kill him, and she was going to enjoy doing it.

Her fingers twitched toward her bag, toward the burner in it. She wanted to call Lucifer, but he had been quite clear in their final interaction. She wasn't going to chase after him again. He'd left her with the skills she needed and a mental list of contacts. The gun and… _this_ had been a nice apology, but he definitely hadn't meant it as an overture of friendliness.

"Sorry I let you think we might be friends when you were nothing more than a student."

"Sorry I made you trust me when the that was the last thing I wanted."

"Sorry I never cared."

She grabbed the bag roughly and pushed herself to her feet, her chair spinning back away from her. 

"Trouble with the boyfriend?" Archie asked and she jumped, having forgotten he was still around.

"No," she said shortly, pushing past him to the door. "I'm going out to get those pics," she added, assuming there was another legitimate job in her email inbox from him. "See you tomorrow."

She was out the door before he could respond. She might have heard him muttering something about "that time of the month," but it could've just as easily been the wind. She hurried to her car and slid in behind the wheel. When the barest opening was available, she pulled out in a screech of tires, not sure where she was going. If she could only go fast enough, she could outrun her thoughts, but with LA traffic there was no hope of that.

* * *

Her searches weren't turning up enough information for her to be comfortable killing Smith immediately. He was, without a doubt, guilty, but he was also slippery as an eel and twice as mean. She didn't want the hit—no, she wasn't being paid for this, this was going to be straight out murder and the fact that she no longer cared said something about herself that she wasn't going to examine—going sideways because she hadn't done enough research.

To top it all off, Trixie was having problems at school again—another, different bully that she wasn't taking lying down—and Chloe was nearly at her wits end over what to do about that. She couldn't send her to private school, not without Dan questioning where she got the money from. She couldn't just change public schools; all the ones in the area were at capacity.

She didn't like seeing her little monkey so miserable, but she couldn't see what to do beyond going to endless parent-teacher conferences that tried to put the blame on her kid for "instigating" when that wasn't true at all. If she could, she would whisk Trixie and herself away, to somewhere that had none of the problems living in LA came with.

It was a nice dream.

But school was the same everywhere, teachers and administration were the same everywhere, her job was the same everywhere, and everywhere you go there you are. She slammed her way into the car after yet another lunchtime parent-teacher conference, barely taking the time to put on her seatbelt before she was pulling out of the parking lot.

"Detective."

The voice in her ear had her nearly sending the car into a spin when she jerked the wheel hard in surprise. She hit the brakes and came to a squealing, shuddering stop with her bumper just touching a lamppost.

"What the _fuck_," she snarled, whirling around in her seat.

Lucifer's face was a mask of mild amusement, but his knuckles were white where he had hold of the oh-shit handle. He let go when he saw her looking and spread his hands, amusement melting into something more sardonic.

"I thought I taught you better than this. You didn't check the backseat before you got in."

"Oh come off it," she said flatly, turning back to face the front and pulling back into traffic before someone called the cops. "I'm not your student anymore; you don't get to treat me like one."

She saw what might have been a crack in his facade, a brief flicker of—was it sadness?—breaking through before it shifted to a wariness she couldn't quite place.

"I heard you've been looking into some things yourself," he said quietly. "I thought I gave you all you needed to see that Smith murdered your father in cold blood."

"You did," she said, glancing at him through the rearview mirror. "I just don't want any surprises when I go to take care of him. He seems a bit more well-connected than any hit I've been on before. The weekend barbecues with the associate warden of-"

"Ah," Lucifer said, sounding uncomfortable, and when she tried to catch his eye in the rearview again, he looked away. "That's what I'm here to discuss."

"The barbecues?" she asked as she turned onto the road that led home.

"The associate warden of programs," he said. "You need to leave him alone. I can guarantee he won't be a problem when you decide to deal with the warden, if that's your concern."

Instead of outright telling him to fuck off, she mulled over what he said for a bit, letting silence fill the car as she decided which angle to tell him to fuck off from. There were just so many. First and foremost was that he wasn't her boss, he wasn't her mentor, he wasn't anything to her anymore. He couldn't decide to pop in and out on whatever whim he was feeling at the moment.

"And just how do you plan on doing that?" she finally asked, hitting her turn signal as she waited for traffic to go by so she could park.

"I'll make sure he's… otherwise occupied at the time of the hit," Lucifer said calmly. The fool.

"And you'll know when that is because…" she said, leading him. She'd watched plenty of detectives lead people into confessions of crimes they did or didn't do during her time on the force. She'd resisted doing it, but, well. She wasn't on the force anymore and she was more gently directing him to a trap of his own making than really leading him anywhere.

"Well because-" he stopped short, suddenly looking guilty, as if he saw the treacherous ground ahead. Then, he forged forward, straight into the pit. "Because it's only right that I keep an eye on you."

"No," she said calmly and got out of the car.

Lucifer tried to open his door, only to find that the safety locks were on. Watching him struggle with the door and bang on the window while he yelled for her to let him out was amusing for a minute. When he started to look like he was thinking of climbing over the seats to get to the front, she sighed and went to open the door.

He unfolded out of the car to his full height, the sun behind him catching his hair and making it look like he was surrounded by a halo of soft light. Chloe couldn't find her breath in that moment, caught in the way she wanted to bury her hand in that hair and drag him down to kiss the ripeness of his lips. "What do you mean, no?"

She scowled and shoved the thought away, turning to head inside. "I mean no. It is not right for you to keep an eye on me. It is not right for you to be spying on me."

He followed her in, which was something she hadn't been expecting. The lines between mentor and friendship had been blurring when they last spent any amount of time together, but he'd always been adamant about keeping her private life away from him. Yet here he was, in her home but not taking the chance to look around. Rather, he was intent on her as she dropped her keys and sunglasses in the bowl and moved him aside to lock the door.

"You're going to stop," she said firmly and headed into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. She didn't offer him any.

"But-" he started, but she was in no mood to hear it.

"No," she said again. "You're the one who wanted this. You decided we couldn't be friends and you decided I had learned all I could from you. So you're going to stop stalking me. I am grateful for everything you taught me, but, to be frank, _I don't need you anymore_."

She drained the glass of water in one long swallow, wishing it were something stronger.

Lucifer was silent, watching her, his gaze focused on her neck. He looked… regretful. He looked like he was going to tell her, yet again, that she was nothing more than a student to him and-

"You're right," he said quietly, and she nearly choked on her water.

"I'm sorry?" she said once she'd stopped coughing. He looked faintly amused at that.

"I said you're right. I- I may have-" His mouth opened and closed as he tried to spit out whatever he wanted to say. He looked uncomfortable, shifting on his feet and fixing his cuffs like they were ever out of place.

She got down a second glass and the scotch she hid from Trixie up on the highest shelf. She added a generous splash to each glass and handed him one. He downed it and grimaced.

"Surely you have a better-"

"Nope," she said shortly.

"Ah, right." He paused there, finally looking around instead of focusing on her. It seemed to register, then, that he was in her house, her space. That he had invaded her sanctuary without asking. "I should…"

"Go," she said, suddenly tired with an out of place ache in her heart. "If you're going to go, then go, but do not come back. I don't want to see your face again. If you need anything from me, you can go through Maze like everyone else in the business."

He swayed backward. She could see him almost take a step back, his muscles tensing and his weight shifting. But then he held strong and didn't move beyond that simple sway backwards.

"You were right," he said, "and I was wrong. I-" He swallowed. "I had a gun made for you."

"I know that," she said and took another sip of her scotch. It was cheap scotch, he was right, and it burned going down. "You gave it to me and then made it very clear that you didn't want to see me again."

"It was an apology," he said in a rush. "For- Overreacting, I suppose. I never meant- Look, can we just… pretend nothing happened?"

She thought about it. It was the easy way out, but she was tired and she didn't want to fight about it anymore. "Are you going to pull this stunt again?" she asked, finally.

He shook his head and shifted his weight silently.

"Fine," she said, a smile flickering over her face as he seemed to relax. "Another drink?"

He made a face but held out his glass anyway. Her laugh sounded strained as she poured him another couple fingers. Then she led him further into her home and gestured for him to sit on the sofa. He sat and leaned back as he stretched his legs out in front of him. He looked the picture of a relaxed sociality, taking up more space than necessary, and if she'd had a camera on her burner she'd have taken a picture.

"You truly do need to stop looking into the associate warden," he said into the silence.

"Why?" she asked. A simple question, but he paused before answering.

"His father is associated with some people I'd rather you didn't come in contact with," he finally said, watching her with dark eyes.

It was that, the way he didn't look away guiltily like he was trying to protect her when she didn't need it, the way he looked so serious about the danger he was hinting at, that did her in.

"Fine," she said, slumping back on the other end of the couch. She kicked her shoes off and brought her feet up, turning as she did, and absently tucked her toes under his thigh. "Fine, okay, I'll leave him alone and just. Plan on a day he's working, I suppose."

Lucifer was silent for a long stretch, staring into his scotch while she watched him, studied his profile. She would know it anywhere at this point, but was surprised at how much she had missed it.

"Will you let me help you?" he finally asked.

She thought about it. She wanted to kill Smith. She wanted to kill him almost more than anything in the world (almost more than she wanted her monkey to be _happy_ again, but not quite, never quite). And as long as she was the one to do it, she supposed she didn't much care who helped.

"Alright," she said and smiled into her glass when Lucifer started, turning to stare at her with wide eyes for a moment before blinking and going back to watching the blank TV. "Alright, you can help, but I get him. You can help get me into a room with him, but _I_ get him."

"Of course," he said quickly. "I wouldn't dream of taking that away from you."

"Good," she said and slid her toes out from under his thigh and stood, looking at him expectantly. He was still staring at the TV, so she sighed and nudged his shoulder. He turned to look at her, his face marred by a slight frown. "Trixie's going to be home soon," she explained.

"Ah, right, of course," he said, looking like he wanted to say something else. "Your urchin."

She couldn't help the amused smile she gave him. "Yes. My daughter. Do you need a ride anywhere?"

"No, no," he said, jumping up and draining the last of the scotch. He handed her the empty glass and strode to the door. "I- Thank you," he said, so quietly she almost didn't catch it, and then slipped out the door and pulled it closed silently behind him.

She didn't move until Trixie rocketed through the door and straight to her room, five minutes later. Then Chloe sighed and went to rinse the glasses and drink some juice so she could talk to her daughter without the smell of scotch on her breath.

"Trixie?" she called once that was done. "Time for homework."

* * *

Chloe stood in the center of Smith’s den at the end of the entrance hallway. She was calm, not an ounce of tension in her frame. Her gun—the one Lucifer had given her—was in a shoulder holster and clearly visible from the doorway. One thumb was hooked in the belt loop of her jeans, and she was smiling.

Smith walked in at ten of six on the dot. He was staring at his phone in his hands, swiping left occasionally, and it took him five steps into the house to look up and see her. He stopped for the barest of seconds before whirling to leave, one hand already going to draw his gun.

Chloe didn’t move.

Lucifer had slid like a ghost out of the coat closet behind Smith. Before Smith was all the way turned around to flee, Lucifer disarmed him, taking away the gun with a chiding noise while twisting Smith’s arm up behind his back so far his shoulder was in danger of popping out.

He propelled Smith further into the room, gun muzzle pressed to the base of his skull. The air was quiet and warm. None of them made a sound, lending an eerie air to the house. Chloe wondered if Smith had known what was coming.

His eyes were wide and a bead of sweat dripped down his face. He opened his mouth to break the silence and Chloe put one finger to her lips, hissing out a shushing breath. There must have been something in her eyes because Smith’s mouth snapped shut and Lucifer looked delighted.

She leaned forward, even though she couldn’t hope to loom over this man, couldn’t hope to be physically intimidating. His eyes kept drifting over to the gun safe, hidden in the corner. There was a nice assortment of automatic weapons in there, but he wasn’t going to have a chance to get them.

"My name," Chloe said, slowly and clearly, confident in Lucifer having dealt with the security system beforehand, "is Chloe Decker. You killed my father. Prepare to suffer."

Smith’s eyes went impossibly wide before he dropped to the ground, dead to the world. Lucifer holstered his gun and shot a sharp grin her way, all teeth, his eyes dark.

"Shall we, darling?" he asked, and she nodded, stepping forward to help carry Smith to the trunk of the nondescript car parked out back.

She was quiet as Lucifer drove, ignoring the occasional thump from the trunk of the car. He’d assured her that it was perfectly safe to keep Smith back there; he’d removed the trunk release and anyway Smith was tied up nice and tight, like a Christmas ham.

Lucifer kept glancing at her though, and as they left the city it was beginning to get on her nerves. If he was worried that she wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done-

"What?" she snapped.

He looked pleased to have caught her attention and smirked at her, taking his eyes off the road for just a bit longer than she was comfortable with. "What was that back there, Detective? Do you think Smith has six fingers?"

She paused for a moment before answering. She just… couldn’t picture Lucifer actually watching movies for fun. She couldn’t picture him doing much of anything that wasn’t related to being a hitman. It made her feel just the tiniest bit guilty that, while she had volunteered plenty of information about herself, she had never asked him about his life.

For all she knew, he had a family hidden away somewhere. The thought made something twist in her stomach, and she grimaced. No, if anything he had purposefully made it seem like he didn’t have a life or contacts outside of being a hitman. He wouldn’t appreciate her prying.

"Detective?" he said, a worried tinge to his voice.

She shook her head and said, "You watched _The Princess Bride_?"

"Of course I have," he said, sounding surprised. "It’s a classic."

"Right," she said. "A classic."

He glanced at her again, his brow furrowed a bit. "Well, yes, sometimes I do take some time off from this job."

"Right," she said again, feeling her cheeks color. "Of course, I know that, I just- You don’t seem like a romcom sort of guy."

"It’s hardly just a romcom!" he said, and she couldn’t tell if the offense in his voice was real or faked.

"Don’t knock romcoms," she said with a smile instead of trying to figure it out.

He scoffed and when he glanced at her, he was smiling. She returned a smile of her own. "Name one romcom that isn’t utter shite."

"_The Princess Bride_," she said without pause.

His laughter was rough and he looked surprised, like he wasn’t used to that particular noise coming from him. "Touché," he said, a shining grin on his face.

She caught herself thinking that, if her life were a romcom, this would be where she would kiss him. She would lean over the divider between their seats and press her lips against his, swallowing his laugh or his gasp or a quite noise of surprise. He’d try to keep one eye on the road, and she’d break away only so they didn’t crash. It would be-

What was she _thinking_? She might be attracted to Lucifer a little bit, but he was a hitman. For all intents and purposes, he was a serial killer, and a violent one at that. She shouldn’t be attracted to him at _all_, never mind daydreaming about anything other than a one-time fling between them that would just complicate things and thus wasn’t worth it.

Besides. Her life was too full of tragedy and heartache to be a romcom.

When Lucifer finally turned off the road, they had been in the car for hours. He turned onto a dirt path and they bounced down it until a little cabin came into view. It was small, probably a single room, and surrounded by forest. There wouldn’t be anyone around to hear Smith scream, and she was viciously glad of that.

Smith struggled as best he could as they removed him from the trunk and moved him into the cabin. It was like carrying a slippery fish, and it wasn’t until Lucifer stopped and threatened to knock him out again that he stopped.

They secured him to a chair in the center of a room covered in plastic. There was a table against the wall directly across from the chair. Smith looked around with shrewd eyes, obviously calculating means of escaping. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so sad. His muscles were tense and his wrists lifted almost imperceptibly from the chair arms. The cop in Chloe approved of his attempts to make the ropes looser when he relaxed.

She didn’t need to care about cutting off circulation to his limbs, though, so she and Lucifer just pulled the ropes extra tight until they bit into his skin. He wasn’t going anywhere.

"You’re not escaping this," Chloe said as she removed the gag.

He worked his jaw for a moment, before saying, "Your daddy would be so disgusted with you right now."

"Well he’s dead, so I guess that doesn’t matter now," she said calmly. Any minor hesitation that was left fled at his words. She was fully committed and Lucifer seemed to be able to tell, because he flashed a toothy smile at her.

"Ready, Detective?" he asked, and she pulled out a knife, returning his toothy smile. He stepped back, ceding the floor to her as she stepped in closer to Smith.

"Wait!" he said, eyes on the knife.

She paused agreeably, and, when he just watched her warily without continuing, she motioned with the knife for him to continue.

"I can give you information on who ordered your father’s murder. I was just the weapon! I-"

"Shh," Chloe said, tracing a line down his face with the tip of her knife. He shut up, his eyes rolling to try to follow the movement. "It’s good you know why you’re here. I won’t have to waste time explaining."

He swallowed and flinched away as she dug the point into his cheek a little, drawing a drop of blood. It slid down his face, catching in the corner of his mouth, and his tongue flicked out to swipe it away. He still didn’t look scared enough for her tastes. He looked like he thought he could still talk his way out of this.

"The sin-" he started, stopping short when Lucifer growled and stepped forward.

"Perhaps it’s time to cut out his tongue," he said over Smith’s attempt to continue. "He’ll be able to scream but we won’t have to listen to his drivel."

Chloe didn’t even have to consider it. "Excellent idea, Lucifer."

Smith’s eyes grew wide and he clamped his mouth shut, cutting off whatever he was saying mid-word. That wasn’t a problem. She pinched his nose close to cut off his air. When he opened his mouth to gasp in a breath, her fingers darted in to grab his tongue. Unfortunately, he tried to bite her and she barely managed to get her fingers out of the way in time.

"Lucifer," she said quietly.

"With pleasure," he said, coming forward.

He pinched Smith’s nose close and forced his jaw open at the same time. Smith tried to shake his head—whether he was trying to dislodge Lucifer or trying to shake his head "no" was unclear—but Lucifer’s grip was too strong. Chloe grabbed his tongue and pulled it out as far as she could. Then with one quick flash of the knife, Smith was screaming through a gout of blood.

She dropped his tongue to the floor.

"Lighter’s in my front pocket," Lucifer said, nodding downward as Smith coughed and he stepped nimbly out of the spray without letting go.

She stared at him blankly for a second before getting it. He was going to bleed out far too soon if she didn’t cauterize the wound. So she dipped her fingers into Lucifer’s pocket, pulling out his lighter and ignoring the way his eyes went dark. Smith was still letting out a gurgling scream as she flicked open the lighter.

His eyes caught on the flickering light and his screams pitched even higher. Lucifer’s grip was slipping in the blood so she waited for him to readjust before reaching into Smith’s mouth and burning the remnants of his tongue closed. He passed out far too quickly for her liking, slumping forward with his head dropping so blood ran out of it freely, but oh well. She was sure Lucifer had smelling salts in the car, and even if he didn’t, killing time with Lucifer was no hardship.

"I’ll just be a tic," Lucifer said, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiping his hands on it, as though that made any difference in the amount of Smith’s blood on his body.

Chloe leaned against the wall while she waited for him to come back, studying Smith. Planning on how to destroy him piece by piece. Things had escalated quickly, but she could slow down and savor the process. The echoes of his screaming in her mind had her shivering with delight. Revenge had never sounded so sweet.

She couldn’t bring her father back, and yeah, he probably would be disgusted with how she was avenging him. The thought didn’t bother her as much as it would have a year ago. Something important, something that kept normal people from doing this, seemed to have snapped in her.

"Here we are," Lucifer said, coming through the door with a small duffel bag, drawing her away from her thoughts. He dropped the duffel bag on the floor by the table.

"Thanks," she said, touching his shoulder briefly as she came over to rummage through it for the smelling salts.

Lucifer touched her arm, his fingers light against her. A spark of _something_ seemed to connect them for a moment before he pulled away and said, "I’ve got them here," and handed them to her.

"Thanks," she said again, a softer smile than was probably appropriate for the situation crossing her face.

"Time to wake up mister warden sir," she with a mocking lilt to her voice as she popped open the vial under his nose.

He came to with a start, coughing and choking on the blood that had pooled in his mouth and drained down his front. He saw her, opened his mouth to say something, and then moaned in pain from trying to move a tongue that didn’t exist anymore.

"That’s right," she said, smiling at him and patting his head. "You’re not getting out of this. Maybe next time you go to kill an innocent cop, you’ll think twice." She paused, as though thinking herself. "Oh wait, there won’t be a next time."

His eyes widened and a garbled sound came from his mouth. She patted his cheek and said, "Stop making noise," and, when he didn’t, ran her fingers over his ear. "If you’re not going to listen, then you hardly need these, do you?"

He froze and his teeth clicked together, cutting off the noise. His eyes, shining with fear, followed her as she walked away to the table. She bent and pulled a rolled piece of cloth from the duffel bag. With a flourish, she let it unroll across the table, revealing a row of dull, somewhat blood-stained metal instruments that could be used to inflict a significant amount of pain on someone.

She glanced to Lucifer, who was watching Smith with an absent half smile on his face. Seeing that he was content to stay there and let her do what she needed to do, she turned back to the cloth.

"You know," she said as if to Lucifer, "he did try to bite me."

She picked up a pair of pliers and held them to the light as though admiring them, making sure they were in Smith’s line of sight. His eyes grew wider, nearly bugging out of his head, as she turned the pliers back and forth as though studying them.

"He did indeed," Lucifer said easily, coming in with exactly what she wanted. "If you’re going to do more work in his mouth, it would be a good idea to get rid of the teeth."

"Hm," she hummed, watching Smith out of the corner of her eye. He had gone pale and was struggling against the ropes but not getting anywhere. "Maybe later," she said and turned back to Smith, her knife already in hand.

She walked back to him and prowled around his chair silently. He had frozen and tried to follow her with his gaze but couldn’t turn his head enough. She ran her fingers over his ear again before gripping it between her nails in a painful grip. Smith tried to jerk his head away, but she had too good a grip on him. He howled as she slowly cut off his ear, and she let him.

When she moved to the other side, he was shaking and making little gasping noises. She looked up and met Lucifer’s eyes as she put the knife to Smith’s remaining ear. Lucifer looked pleased, his eyes dark and his smile bright when he met her gaze. He didn’t nod or shake his head, leaving the decision—the hit—completely to her. She could see in his eyes that he trusted her to do it right, and it made a warmth fill her, made her grin back, made her bend down to whisper into Smith’s ear.

"This is for my dad."

As she severed his other ear, she let him jerk away halfway through, leaving it dangling by a strip of skin. She found that she was enjoying herself, and, with another glance to Lucifer—who seemed content to stay leaning against the wall—began in earnest.

* * *

"Leave him to rot," Chloe said.

"You know we can’t do that," Lucifer responded, already on the phone to the cleanup crew.

"Yeah," she sighed, eyeing the bloody mess that used to be a man.

Something had settled in her, something she hadn’t known was tense and coiled for over half of her life. Her dad was still dead, but his killer had finally met justice. Real justice. The justice of tooth and claw and hardened daughter. She couldn’t find it in her to regret what she had done, what she had become.

It felt like she had been on this course her entire life, a train ride that only had one destination. It felt like she was finally, finally doing something good for the world.

When news of a fire started by an errant campfire reached her phone from a blocked number, she felt nothing but satisfaction. The fire had started at a cabin, which was burnt to cinders, and spread through ten acres of the woods before firefighters managed to put it out. She should feel bad about that, too, but didn’t. Needs must, and all.

She sat back in her car, waiting outside the house of a banker who had been defrauding his customers—one of whom was a high-level mobster—and smiled.

* * *

Chloe took another sip of her drink at the bar at Lux. Lucifer sat next to her, leaning back against the bar on his elbows, his own drink in hand. He was smiling, talking about his plans for a new central dais in the club. She was smiling too, his enthusiasm contagious in the early morning.

His phone rang, and she could just barely hear the sound of Maze’s voice over the line when he answered. She focused back on the empty club while he talked, imagining the piano in the center of the room raised up, a spotlight on it. Imagined him sitting there, surrounded by a crowd of patrons, and while she couldn’t picture the _him_ she knew doing it, she could see the persona he projected being completely at home up there.

He had hung up the phone at some point while she was lost in thought and was watching her. When he saw he’d caught her attention, he smiled a sharp smile and wiggled the phone at her.

"Once more unto the breach, Detective?"

She smiled and drained her glass before sliding off the chair. He stood with her and they walked to the elevator, shoulders brushing.

"Once more," she murmured as the elevator doors slid closed behind them.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SomeoneAsGoodAsYou: Oh wow folks. This is it. You're not crying, I'm crying. Thank you so much for coming on this wild ride with us. This is the end of part one—think of it as the bottom of the first hill of a rollercoaster—and part two will be coming in the near future. It has been... super awesome writing this, and I'm so happy people are liking it. I can't wait to start sharing the sequel with y'all!
> 
> namedawesome: Thanks for reading you guys. It’s been an amazing journey and a joy to write, especially with my best friend! Thank you for doing this with me and listening to my insane ideas, and keeping me focused on what comes next! Thanks for coming along for the ride; here’s to more in the future, cheers!

**Author's Note:**

> Come join us on tumblr!
> 
> [someoneasgoodasyou](https://someoneasgoodasyou.tumblr.com/)
> 
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